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PRESENTED BY 








FREE AMERICA 
FREE CUBA 
FREE PHILIPPINES 


ADDRESSES 

AT 

A MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL 

SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1901 




THE NEW ENGLAND ANTI-IMPERIALIST LEAGUE 

BOSTON 



1901 














ETf/'3 


CALL FOR THE MEETING 

FREE AMERICA, FREE CUBA, FREE PHILIPPINES. 

MEETING AT FANEUIL HALL, 

SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 8 P.M., 

to protest against the imperial policies of the administration 
\at home and abroad. 

Per order of the Executive Committee New England Anti- 
Imperialist League. 

EPvVING WINSLOW, 

Secretary. 


Gift 

Gen -WB iraey 

N 2 '06 




ADDRESSES 


COL. CHARLES R. CODHAN. 

(Presiding.) 

We are here to-night to renew our vows to the cause of 
liberty and justice, and to the ideals of the Republic. We 
have no intention of giving up the contest upon which we 
have entered. Efiscouraging as the outlook may be for 
the moment, we have faith to believe in the ultimate tri¬ 
umph of the right in these United States. The great ideas 
of freedom, which are peculiarly American, have been 
challenged before now in our history, and before now they 
have been triumphantly vindicated. The truths of the 
Declaration of Independence are again attacked, and that 
“ eternal vigilance, which is the price of liberty,” is re¬ 
quired and will be invoked to defend them. Hitherto, in 
all such contests, the party of liberty has triumphed, how¬ 
ever protracted the contest may have been, and whatever 
checks and reverses may have retarded the result. 

And so, I believe, it will be now; for above all the 
political duties that devolve upon the American people, 
there stands this highest duty, which is to be true to 
their own history, to their own fundamental principles of 
government, and to that moral law which is as binding 
upon nations as upon individual men. 

It may be conceded that the present moment is not one 
which enables us to see clearly the end of this irrepressible 
conflict between right and wrong. Clouds and darkness 
are over us ! To the superficial observer it might seem 
that a terrible indifference to the moral duty of the nation 
has settled upon the people. We seem to see it every¬ 
where : in the street, in general society, in private con¬ 
versation. The last thing that people want to talk about 
is the Philippine war, with its destruction of human life, 
its burnings of refined and of humble homes, its merci¬ 
less cruelty, its list of Filipinos killed exceeding the list 
of Filipinos wounded five to one, the Spanish methods of 
Weyler used to suppress what our government is not 



4 


ashamed to call the insurrection of the Filipinos, who 
are fighting for the same independence for which our 
fathers fought — the wisest and best of the natives, the 
natural leaders of their people, deported to Guam, amidst 
the tears of their sorrowing families, who are left behind — 
the torture of the “water cure” inflicted upon Filipino 
prisoners by the Macabebe savages, who are now the 
allies of the United States, as they were formerly the al¬ 
lies of Spain, and from whom some of our own soldiers 
have, by their own confession, taken lessons in cruelty. 

The American people are becoming ashamed of the 
whole miserable business. The foolish and reckless ex¬ 
citement of a year and a half ago is passing away. The 
people are thinking, and are asking themselves why it is 
that those who were our friends, and who aided us in the 
Spanish war, are now our enemies. Some of our fellow- 
citizens say that they want information. “ Did not our 
officers,” they ask, “ solicit the assistance of Aguinaldo 
and use him as an ally ? ” It is a pity that they did not 
seek information sooner. Had they done so they would 
have learned that the Filipinos became our enemies as soon 
as they understood that their independence was to be de¬ 
nied them by the United States government. It was the 
proclamation of the President — that was sent to General 
Otis in December, 1898, announcing that by the treaty 
with Spain — not then ratified — the Philippine islands 
had been ceded to the United States, and that the military 
rule of the United Stales would be extended over them 
immediately—that opened the eyes of the Philippine 
patriots. The war was inevitable when that proclamation 
was flung at these men, who were ready to fight and to 
die for their liberties. 

When, in April, 1775, the soldiers of George the Third 
began their march from Boston to Lexington to seize the 
American stores at Concord, the king’s war against 
American liberty had begun before ever a shot had been 
fired on Lexington green. When, in February, 1899, 
McKinley’s proclamation w r as made public in Mauila, 
the President’s war against the liberty of the Philippine 
people had begun by the act of the President himself, and 
it matters not when or bj T whom the first shot was fired. 

Think, my friends,, for a moment how easily we might 
have had peace with the Philippine people ! it was only 
to have said to them when, with their efficient aid, we had 
taken Manila, “We will treat you as we promised to 
treat the Cubans.” Not a hostile shot would have been 




5 


fired after such a declaration as that; and there would 
have been the same peace in Luzon that there has been 
in Cuba. The Filipinos would have believed our promise 
as the Cubans then believed it. They would have be¬ 
lieved us, and they will believe us now, unless they hear 
too much of the administration’s dealings with Cuba. 

Is the administration going to make us false to our 
promise to Cuba? We have said to Cuba by the well- 
nigh unanimous declaration of our Congress that she is of 
right free and independent. We have promised, by the 
same unanimous declaration, that when the island is paci¬ 
fied we will leave its government and control to its people. 
Is it uot pacified? Is there any disorder there? A peace¬ 
ful constitutional convention, chosen freely by the Cuban 
people, has met; it has drawn up a constitution following 
the pattern of our own. Are we not, as an honorable 
nation, bound to leave the island as soon as we can get 
our troops out of it? And yet, as has happened before, 
the President is undertaking to impose conditions before 
doing his “plain duty.” Cuba must promise never to 
contract any debts beyond her power to pay, and if she 
does so, in the opinion of the United States government, 
the United States must have the right to intervene. Cuba 
must agree to sell naval stations to the United States be¬ 
fore the United States will keep its word. Cuba must 
agree, in short, not to be independent of that nation which, 
alone of all the powers of the earth, has declared that 
she is “of right free and independent.” 

Fellow-citizens ! honest men ! moral meu ! ministers of 
religion ! teachers of youth ! honorable men of business, 
whose word is as good*as your bond! men who hate a 
lie ! men who would submit to poverty or death before 
they would break their plighted word ! are you going to 
sit still while your government, your political agents, your 
paid servants place your country in a position to excite 
the sneers of the haters of republican government, and 
the grief of honest and liberty-loving men everywhere ? 
Do you want to be ashamed of your country? If not, 
then you had better call down your President. Before 
you realize it you may find some day that, like the Fili¬ 
pinos, the Cubans will think that their liberties are to be 
taken away after the Philippine fashion. Then perhaps 
there will be excitement on the island. Some patriots 
may be rash. Some Cubans, burning with the sense of 
injustice to themselves and their country, may not be able 
to curb their desire for liberty. There may then be con- 


6 


flict between the American soldiers and their former 
Caban allies, and we shall have another ignoble war upon 
our hands, which the administration that has brought it 
on will call an “ insurrection,” and will ask us to “ sup¬ 
press.” 

One of our objects in meeting here to-night is to give 
information to anxious inquirers. We will continue the 
work of our League, we will spread the information we 
have over the country wherever it is asked for, and some¬ 
times where it is not asked for. And we will trust our 
countrymen to do justice at last. We will not believe that 
when they stop to think, the American people will love 
prosperity better than honor; that they, whose liberty is 
their birthright, will suffer their agents to destroy the 
liberties of other men. We will not believe that the 
American people will always be deceived by the wretched 
and impious cant, that destiny ” leads us on to murder, 
and to rob of their country an intelligent and inoffensive 
people who were our friends and allies in the war with 
Spain. Do not, my fellow-citizens, be deceived by the 
false and weak pleas that are put forth by the advocates 
of imperialism and oppression. “ The Filipinos shall 
have liberty,” they say, “ as much as is good for 
them,—as soon as they surrender to the United States 
all power to fight for liberty.” “ Give up all your arms,” 
says the United States government, “ and we will stop 
killing you. And, after that,—subject to the control 
of the United States, —you shall have such freedom as we 
think you are fit for.” A people who will resist such in¬ 
solent dictation as this from an antagonist of enormous 
power is as worthy of liberty as ‘ever were the Swiss, or 
the Dutch, or the Americans. 

I do not like to speak of the present situation as dis¬ 
couraging, but certainly it has no precedent in our his¬ 
tory. The administration at Washington has at its 
command an army that may be raised to 100,000 men 
whenever the President wills it. It has money to supply 
that army, and it cannot be interfered with until Congress 
meets in December. Until then there is nothing to pre¬ 
vent the continuance of the Philippine war as long as the 
administration chooses to wage it; and when Congress 
meets, it may find that a Cuban war is superadded to it. 

Nothing can or will stay its hand but the force of pub¬ 
lic opinion, and the friends of the administration will tell 
you that public opinion is on their side. They say, 
“ Has not Mr. McKinley been reelected President by a 


large majority, and does not that show that the people 
approve his course?” But there are those who voted for 
him who tell us that hundreds and thousands of voters 
supported him, though not approving his acts, from con¬ 
siderations of political necessity. I am not going to speak 
of any responsibility that such voters may have incurred ; 
but this much can be said, I hope, without offence. We 
have the right to expect that such voters will* use all their 
influence and power to stem the tide of materialism and 
of national dishonor. We have a right to ask, in this 
crisis, that every man who holds public office, or a posi¬ 
tion of public influence, shall show his colors, if he be¬ 
lieves that freedom is in danger, and that a great national 
disgrace and misfortune is impending from the course of 
the administration which he helped to elect. Some of 
Mr. McKinley’s supporters do stand openly for the ideals 
of the Republic, but how few they are ! Is there any 
aspirant for office or holder of an office in Massachusetts, 
legislative, executive or judicial, state or national, 
who voted for McKinley, that will openly and manfully 
take his stand with Senator Hoar and Mr. McCall? Cer¬ 
tainly none has yet done so. They may say in private 
that it is all very wrong, but will they take their political 
lives in their hands and say so to their fellow-citizens 
openly, bravely, and regardless of results to themselves? 
Perhaps they will, but let me say to them that they can¬ 
not afford to put off this avowal much longer. Or will 
they appeal to Mr. McKinley himself? He cannot be ex¬ 
pected to listen to his opponents. He may perhaps listen 
to those who have supported him. Will they not move? 
What is it that paralyzes them — here in Massachusetts 
of all places in the world? Are all the Republican poli¬ 
ticians in Massachusetts, except Senator Hoar and Mr. 
McCall, mere party managers, or party slaves? Are 
there no young men among them who will lead for liberty, 
as Sumner, and Andrew, and Wilson, and Boutwell did 
fifty years ago, casting “party” to the winds, when 
freedom was in danger? Thank heaven, Charles Sum¬ 
ner’s successor in the Senate still stands for Sumner’s 
ideas, though he may lack something of Sumner’s power 
of moral indignation ! And yet I would respectfully say 
to Senator Hoar, there seems to be a necessity here for 
some righteous indignation. It is not easy for plain men 
to believe that a statesman is really in earnest, who has 
nothing but soft words and flowery compliments for the 
perpetrators of — what that statesman himself has dem- 



8 


onstrated to be — crimes against liberty and national 
honor. 

Fellow-citizens, these people of the East and West 
Indies are at our mercy. Neither Cubans nor Filipinos 
can successfully dofend their liberties against the tremen¬ 
dous power of the United States, if we are determined to 
put forth that power. Sooner or later their resistance 
must cense. Their leaders will be captured like Agui- 
naldo, or deported like Mabini, or killed in battle; but 
let us remember that when we deprive other men of their 
freedom, we endanger our own. “Those who deny free¬ 
dom to othei;s,” said Abraham Lincoln, “ deserve it not 
themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it.” 

We — anti-imperialists—are ready to follow the lead 
of any public men, even if they have been supporters of 
the administration, who are now ready to demand such 
changes in its policy as will assure liberty and justice to 
the people of Cuba and the Philippines* Put if they 
will not lead us or help us, wo shall light our battle alone. 
We can find in our own ranks men of “ light and loading,” 
and wo shall appeal to the great mass of the American 
people, who arc sure to be with us when they understand, 
as some time they will understand, that in this contest is 
involved the future of democracy and of freedom. 


9 


THE HON. GEORGE S. BOUTWELL. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : This meeting, 
under the orders of the League, is a meeting , for short 
speeches. I shall obey the orders. If it shall happen 
that to-morrow morning in any of the newspapers there 
shall appear as a speech of mine something that you do 
not hear to-night, you may attribute the extension to the 
reporters. I shall treat the speech as a New Hampshire 
farmer treated a speech made by Mr. Webster. When 
asked how he liked the speech, he said, “ It wasn’t much 
of a speech, but he said very much what I should 
myself have said.” 

I shall say of this speech : If it shall appear to-morrow 
morning in an extended form, it is not much of a speech, 
but it is about what I should myself have said.” Having 
introduced the reporters, I am disposed to say something of 
them. I began my acquaintance with reporters in 1842, 
when Thomas Gill was the reporter for the kk Boston Post,” 
when Buckingham reported for the “ Courier,” and when 
Hale, whether it was the Rev. Dr. Hale or one of his 
brothers, was also a reporter. Then came a long list of 
reporters. I have this to say of them in all sincerity : In 
all my experience with them I have never been in any 
important particular misrepresented or betrayed. 

We are here to plead the cause of America. We are 
not pleading the cause of Cuba, or of Porto Rico, or of . 
the Philippine islands, except as our success in redeeming v 
America will secure justice for them. Hence our duty 
and our course of action are not changed by the seizure 
of Aguinaldo. 

We are here to make our protest against the policy of 
empire in America. This is the duty that rests upon us, \J 
and this duty must continue until a final judgment shall 
have been rendered by the American people. We sym¬ 
pathize with the struggling patriots of South Africa and 
the Philippines, and to-night we welcome a representative 
of the Philippine islands. 

i The time is near when the third annual campaign of the 
i war in the Philippine islands must be brought to a close, 
and the time has come when the people of the United 
, States are justified in a review of the events of the 


10 


campaigns of 1899,1900, and 1901. If, through the cen¬ 
sorship of the telegraph and of the press, and the with¬ 
holding of official papers from public knowledge, our 
means of information are limited, they are yet sufficient 
to justify an opinion upon the one important question : Is 
the administration of President McKinley worthy of the 
approval or does it deserve the condemnation of the 
country ? 

As a political question, his administration has been ap¬ 
proved, but it is open, and it must ever remain open, for 
inquiry upon ethical grounds. The election of November, 
1900, ended the contest over the presidency, but it did not 
end the contest over the war in the Philippine islands, nor 
did it check inquiry as to the wisdom of a public policy of 
which that w'ar is but a symptom. That inquiry will not 
be brought to an end until history has ceased to command 
the thought of mankind. 

From Republicans very largely, and from clergymen 
very generally, I am met with the statement that it was a 
mistake, or an error, or a misfortune that Dewey did not 
leave the bay of Manila when the Spanish fleet had been 
destroyed, coupled with the ejaculation: “But we are 
there, and what are we to do ? ” The question, “ What are 
we to do?” is answered by the declaration of those who 
ask the question and who declare that the delay of Dewey 
was an error, or a mistake, or a public misfortune. 

What is the teaching of the pulpit in regard to other 
wrongs and sins ? Does it tolerate and advise continuance 
in the wrong until the sinner can escape from his entangle¬ 
ments without admitting his sins? If it was an error for 
Dewey to remain at Manila, when he had no knowledge 
that allies were to be betrayed ; when he had no knowl¬ 
edge that ten million friendly natives were to be converted 
into earnest and vindictive enemies; when he could not 
have foreseen war, and that at the end of three years of 
war the only fruits would be desolated homes, stricken 
families, deserted fields, and barren acres; how much 
more ample and conclusive are the reasons for the aban¬ 
donment of Manila when the betrayal of our allies has 
been followed by the loss of ten million friends; when 
two years of war and massacre have made peace through 
war impossible ; when the augmentation of military forces 
is not followed by military successes; when the invading 
army is besieged and held in check by those whom it in¬ 
vades and seeks to oppress, and when proffers of friend¬ 
ship and peace have been rejected with menaces and . 


threats? And by whom? Not by Dewey, but by the 
President of the United States. On him the sole respon¬ 
sibility rests. 

If lingering in Manila bay was only error in 1898, the 
act has been transformed into a series of criminal offences 
against public justice and common morality, beginning 
with the President’s proclamation of Dec. 21, 1898, and 
consummated, or perhaps only apparently consummated, 
by the deportation of prisoners to desert islands or to for¬ 
eign lands under orders of military chieftains who know 
no law but their own will, and whose security in the per¬ 
petration of a crime for which forgiveness has been denied 
in every civilized country was to be found in the quiet ac¬ 
quiescence of the chief magistrate of the first republic of 
the world. 

Nor could Dewey, in the late spring of 1898, have 
foreseen the day, now fortunately reached, when the 
patriotism of the youth of America would refuse to ac¬ 
cept military service in foreign lands for the suppression 
of the spirit of patriotism in a people entitled to freedom 
and self-government. 

What is the next step in this career of delusion and 
folly and crime? We are to create a mercenary army to 
be employed in a war so offensive to American patriotism 
that American patriots will not engage in it. But by 
whom is payment to be made? By these same American 
patriots. And to whom ? To the followers of Mahomet, 
to the slaves and serfs of the Sultan of Sulu, who is 
already our pensioned ally. 

Where is the service to be performed, and against 
whom? In Luzon, in Cebu, in Panay, and against 
Christians, against republicans, against bodies of men 
who are already the supporters of schools, of colleges, of 
churches, and who 'are the unpurchased protectors of the 
domestic virtues. 

Thus we are to employ bands of mercenaries for the 
subjugation of Christian republicans — mercenaries who 
will be animated, not only by the pay and favor that we 
may bestow upon them, but also by a fanaticism which 
has" carried the religion of Mahomet over the continents 
of Asia and Africa. In this war of mercenaries we may 
expect scenes of horror such as have not been experienced 
since the early Christians perished in the catacombs or 
were slaughtered in the amphitheatres of ancient Rome. 

Thus will be written a chapter in our annals of benev¬ 
olent assimilation ; or will mankind misread the chapter 


12 


and imagine it to be a chapter on malevolent dissimula¬ 
tion ? 

At the request of the secretary of war authority has 
been given for the enlistment of fifteen regimefits of 
Filipinos for the suppression of the insurrection in the 
Philippine islands, and the secretary proposes to establish 
a school of discipline and morals wherein they are to be 
trained up or down to our ideas of civilized war. The 
proposition is instructive upon two points. It contains 
an admission that the patriotism of the youth of America 
declines service in the army of the East, and it is a con¬ 
fession that the mercenaries whom we are to employ are 
savages or barbarians. In the presence of this final fact, 
what remains of our claim that we are the representa¬ 
tives of a Christian civilization and that, although we are 
traversing the earth with arms in our hands, we are upon 
a mission of peace and good will, and for the advance¬ 
ment of mankind? We condemned the employment of 
Hessian mercenaries by Great Britain in our war for inde¬ 
pendence, and yet more bitterl} 7 did we condemn the 
employment of the savage Indians in our early frontier 
wars. And how different is the proposition of the sec¬ 
retary of war, which Congress has accepted and made 
a part of the polic} T of the countiy? 

In his speech on the Jay treaty and in behalf of peace, 
Fisher Ames drew a picture of war as carried on by sav¬ 
age mercenaries. In his appeal to the representatives of 
the frontier States he said : “ Your cruel dangers — your 
more cruel apprehensions—are soon to be renewed ; the 
wounds yet unhealed are to be torn open again. In the 
daytime your path through the woods will be ambushed, 
the darkness of night will glitter with the blaze of your 
dwellings. You are a father — the blood of your sons shall 
fatten your cornfields; you are a mother — the warwhoop 
will wake the sleep of 3 T our cradle.” 

This picture, so drawn, and vivid with the imaginative 
genius of the great orator, finds a rival in the homely 
account which the soldier Jones has written of the wed¬ 
ding scene in the province of Santa Cruz, and which I 
shall read in the course of this address. The inevitable 
horrors of war degenerate into brutality when war be¬ 
comes a war of retaliation such as we are now carrying 
on in the Philippines, or when war is waged through 
mercenaries, who have no country to defend, who are 
strangers to the sentiment of patriotism, and who, having 
taken up arms for hire against their own country, a.re 


13 


as well prepared for a career of crime as were the 
slave traders who hovered around the mouth of the 
Congo river or the pirates who terrorized the commerce 
of the Mediterranean sea at the beginning of the last 
century. Such are the recruits that we are to accept, 
and for whose conduct America is to become responsible. 
We are now.to employ men to betray their own country, 
and we expect them to be faithful to us. From our ex¬ 
perience in the attempts that have been made to organize 
civil governments by the aid of friendly natives, we have 
learned nothing. Again and again the commissions and 
the military authorities have been deceived and betrayed, 
but our confidence remains unimpaired, or, rather, it is 
the necessity of the situation that the army should be re¬ 
cruited in Asia, now that the supply of recruits in America 
is diminishing. Prosperity, so effective in securing votes, 
is the enemy of the recruiting service. It is not impossi¬ 
ble that relief for the administration, in this particular, 
is near at hand. The war in China has destroyed our 
trade with that country, and our attempt to regulate the 
industrial policy of Russia may prostrate our own indus¬ 
tries, and thus masses of laborers may be compelled to 
choose between idleness and poverty at home, and service 
in the array abroad. 

With continuing prosperity, the demand for aid through 
mercenaries will become more and more pressing, and the 
conduct of the war in the Philippines will become more 
and more brutal. 

In tracing the policy of the President I am led to ask 
these questions : How can a people organized'as a nation 
become a world power, and how can a nation continue to 
be a world power? How is America to become a world 
power? These are the questions that have been thrust 
upon the country by President McKinley. It is assumed 
by the questions that previous to 1897 America did not 
have rank as a world power, and it may be assumed fur¬ 
ther that the President entered upon a policy which, in his 
opinion, would advance the country to that rank. 

The wisdom of that policy, with reference to the end in 
view, I am now to consider. I shall assume also that the 
President’s policy contemplates other results which, in his 
opinion, may be advantageous to himself or beneficial to 
the country. On two public occasions I have expressed 
the opinion that President McKinley is a very able man, 
and I follow him in his public policy upon that theory. 
Senator Hoar has put a very significant question in his 


14 


speech of April 17, 1900. The question is this, namely: 
“ Whether the inestimable and imperishable principles of 
human liberty are to be trampled down by the American 
republic, and whether its great bulwark and fortress, the 
American constitution, impregnable from without, is to be 
betrayed from within?” 

This inquiry is without significance, unless it is an ar¬ 
raignment of President McKinley as the author of a policy 
by which the principles of human liberty are to be tram¬ 
pled down, and the constitution of the United States is to 
be betrayed. This is the gravest arraignment of Presi¬ 
dent McKinley that has been made by any person in pub¬ 
lic life. Can the arraignment be justified upon the facts 
of President McKinley’s policy, and can he be held re¬ 
sponsible for the existence of those facts? Is President 
McKinley a responsible and intelligent betrayer of his 
country ? 

It is now nearly twelve months since the interrogative 
accusation was made against the President. Jn these 
twelve months he has proclaimed in letters and speeches, 
and in his inaugural address, his adherence to the policy 
which the inquiry condemns. The policy of the President 
has not been changed. 

There are, then, in this year 1901, firmer grounds on 
which the suggestive accusations of April, 1900, may rest, 
and graver reasons for apprehending the evils indicated 
by that inquiry. 

Resting upon the opinion that President McKinley is a 
man of signal ability, I give him credit for capacity to 
comprehend the natural, the inevitable consequences of 
his policy as they have been set forth by Senator Hoar. 

The President is supported by bodies of men who think 
his policy an erroneous policy, a dangerous policy, and 
who yet excuse him and tolerate him upon the ground that 
he is under bad influences from which he may in time es¬ 
cape. They who belittle the President and condemn his 
policy and yet submit themselves to his leadership, know¬ 
ing that his policy means the overthrow of the Republic, 
and they who proclaim his greatness and condemn his 
policy wdiile they continue to tolerate it and to give it sup¬ 
port, are one and all and alike witnesses to his supremacy 
over them. 

Do you expect me to advance a step and to indicate the 
motive under which the President is acting? May there 
come a President with an overleaping ambition who will 
not be satisfied to see his name in the list and in rank 


15 


with Polk, and Pierce, and Buchanan, and Hayes? Even 
Johnson may be an historical personage when those whom 
I have mentioned shall be neglected, or shall have been 
forgotten utterly. 

The President who can seize a republic of a century, of 
seventy-five million strong, born to an inheritance of 
freedom, of great principles in self-government, illustrated 
by worthy examples, and can build an empire on founda¬ 
tions so laid with possibilities not attained by Rome nor 
possessed by Britain, will have gained a place in history 
as permanent as that occupied by Washington, and such 
a President is already assured of the approval of no in¬ 
considerable portion of mankind. 

If you press me for a more definite answer to the ques¬ 
tion, What motive ? I ask you this question as my answer : 
What vision of the future led Napoleon to carry the 
eagles of France under the “ burning suns of Egypt and 
amid the wintry storms of Russia” and concealed from 
his eye the dismal outlook from the mid-ocean island of 
St. Helena? 

An inquiry into the motives of the President may have 
more interest for the historian than for us. 

I pass that topic, and I ask you to consider this ques¬ 
tion : Whether the measures of the President which are 
set before the country as measures designed to raise 
America to the rank of a world power are not in fact 
measures by which the republic has already taken on the 
characteristics of an empire, and whether the purposes of 
the President are not concealed in the phrase “ world 
power ” ? 

If there is a cardinal principle in the idea and in the 
organization of a republic by which it is distinguishable 
from a monarchy or an empire it must be found in this 
declaration : That the right to govern is in the man, and 
that the power to govern is not derivable from any other 
source whatsoever. An organized republican government 
must rest upon one or both of two conditions : First, the 
assent of the people expressed voluntarily and upon full 
opportunity, or, secondly, submissive assent to an exist¬ 
ing form of government when there is an opportunity for 
protest and resistance. If that can be shown to be true 
which possibly is true, that no such government has ever 
existed, the fact cannot justify a people claiming to be 
republicans, in a policy by which they proceed to violate 
with deliberation and system, the ideal in government, 
which is the only security for the bettering of that 
which is. 


16 


That we have dealt unjustly with the Indians, that the 
emancipated negroes are not in the full enjoyment of their 
rights as American citizens, that women do not possess 
the right to vote, canuot justify our attempt to compel 
millions of human beings to submit unconditionally to our 
rule. The example of our own wrong-doings cannot be 
pleaded in justification of greater wrongs which we our¬ 
selves are committing. 

In South Africa Dewet is teaching the world a new 
lesson in the art of war. Given a large territory and a 
considerable population, and the conquest of such a terri¬ 
tory and such a people may become impossible. Large 
armies may traverse such a country,* but conquest implies 
and requires occupation. If an invading army is to oc¬ 
cupy a country, it must possess it in all its parts. The 
possession of the country requires a division of the invad¬ 
ing forces, and when the invading forces are divided they 
are no longer movable, and when they become immovable 
they are as a city besieged. We have taught Aguinaldo 
and his successors a lesson that will be useful to him and 
to them, and expensive to us in succeeding campaigns. 
We have divided our army of 80,000 men into 400 parts, 
thus giving an average of 200 men in each station. 
Every station that may contain less than 1,000 men is 
exposed constantly to the attack of an overwhelming 
force. Thus may an army of 80,000, when divided into 
400 parts, be terrorized and rendered powerless for any 
purpose except self-defence by the existence of 10 bodies 
of men of 2,000 each who are surrounded by friends, who 
would be warned of danger by friends, and who may move 
with freedom from point to point. 

Such is the condition in the Philippines and in South 
Africa, and that condition will remain as long as the spirit 
of independence shall continue in the people. With this 
new lesson taught and learned England and America may 
wisely ask this question : When will the wars in South 
Africa and the Philippines come to an end? When you 
have exterminated the inhabitants or extinguished the 
love of liberty in the human breast, or when for us we 
undertake the task, that has not yet been attempted by 
any one, of demonstrating the validity of our claim to 
govern the inhabitants of the Philippine islands. 

May a state indulge in act9 and practices which are 
crimes in individuals and defend or excuse its doings upon 
the pretext that it lays its hands upon inferior persons, 
and exerts its controlling power over them, but for their 


17 


final good, sometimes in this world, and sometimes in 
another? This promise is never tendered by any but 
despots, and promises which despots tender are always 
violated. It was the excuse for slavery and the slave- 
trade. The barbarians of Africa were transferred to a 
land of Christian civilization and destined to great re¬ 
wards in the hereafter. 

Notwithstanding the pretexts that were offered in de¬ 
fence of the African slave-trade, the country, as early as 
the year 1808, abolished that system of “benevolent 
assimilation ” and made its practice a capital offence. 
The African slave-trader bought men and women on the 
coast of Africa, and with the purpose of using their labor 
for his own benefit. 

We have bought 10*000,000 men, women, and children 
in the islands of the Pacific seas, and we propose to so 
use and govern them that we can take whatever we may 
choose to take of the proceeds of their labor without con¬ 
sulting them as to the amount to be taken or the uses to 
which it is to be applied. How in ethics is our conduct 
distinguishable from the conduct of the slave-trader on 
the coast of Africa? “Ah,” savs the President, “ we have 
a title through Spain. The slave-trader on the coast of 
Africa had no title to the men he brought away.” In many 
cases he had a title derived from custom. Captives taken 
in war were held and sold as slaves. Such was the custom 
among the “ tribes ” — a custom recognized in ancient 
Rome. The title of Spain was founded upon a custom 
among nations in long gone by times, when civilization 
based on moral principles was not recognized. Even now 
it is assumed that the discovery of an island or a conti¬ 
nent gives the discoverer, when a nation, the right to 
appropriate the territory and to rule the people. Such 
was the title of Spain to Cuba and the Philippines — a 
title which was trampled down when we wrested Cuba 
from the dominion of Spain. 

Such is our title to the Philippine islands, if any title 
we have, and under that title we are exercising absolute 
power over 10,000,000 human beings, who have no legiti¬ 
mate, lawful, and systematic means of redress for any 
wrong that they may suffer from the officers and soldiers 
of the army of the United States. The friends of the 
administration make this answer : “We are to be trusted ; 
nothing wrong will be done.” Thus they open the inquiry 
into their conduct in the Philippine islands and elsewhere 
on which an opinion may be formed as to the value of the 
promises that are now made. 


18 


It appears from the returns that the Filipino losses in 
battle have been in the proportion of five slain for every 
person wounded. General MacArthur’s report, covering ten 
months from Nov. 1, 1899, to Sept. 1, 1900, shows a loss 
of 268 Americans killed and 750 wounded, and a loss of 
3,227 Filipinos killed and 694 wounded, or a ratio of nearly 
five to one. The experience in wars generally has been 
the reverse, the ratio beiug five wounded for every one 
slain in battle. Is it possible that in any one skirmish even 
the first shots were so fatal ? What is the explanation ? 
Does the fact indicate humanity, or does it justify a sus¬ 
picion of brutality and murder? Could there have been 
such a destruction of human life in contests that deserve 
to be classed as honorable contests in an honorable war? 

We are asking the Filipinos to accept our promises of 
justice in government, and what is the character of the 
evidence that w r e offer in support of our promises? 

At the liberty congress held at Indianapolis in August, 
1900, I read an account as given b} r a soldier of the mas¬ 
sacre of a w r edding party, and I now read it to you that 
you may consider the value of the President’s promises 
when illustrated by the doings of his army. The letter 
that I am to read was written by Thomas Jones, a soldier 
in the Philippinean army, to his brother George Jones, an 
employ^ in a bakery in the city of Washington. The 
letter was printed in the “ Washington Star.” Hear 
■what the soldier says : 

“ I have just returned from Santa Cruz from a two days’ 
7 trip in the mountains. We left Santa Cruz about 4.30 on 
the morning of the 5th, and proceeded about thirty miles 
into the mountains. Men from each troop volunteered to 
walk five miles further to a house where, we were informed, 
a Filipino general lived. Beside sixty men we had two 
scouts to show us the way. We sneaked through the 
bushes from place to place, and when we had failed to 
find the house, or even see any natives, we became dis¬ 
gusted, and proceeded to return to Santa Cruz. Just as 
we were about to turn back we heard a sound of laughter 
near us, and we started ahead again, and, creeping through 
the bushes, we came in sight of a house. We saw a Fili¬ 
pino officer addressing a crowd of natives. In the house 
a wedding ceremony was being performed, an insurgent 
officer taking to himself a better half. During the speech 
the audience cried out: ‘Long live Aguinaldo! ’ We 
were about twenty-five }mrds from the house when the 
word was given to charge, but not to shoot the children. 


19 


Most of the party had been indulging in wine, and were 
not sober. Each soldier took aim and rushed upon the 
crowd and fired. Those who escaped took refuge in the 
building. On the ground near the house were the bodies 
of the slain, and among them were the bridegroom and 
the bride, both weltering in their blood.” 

This statement was published in the city of Washington 
more than six months ago. I have watched the news¬ 
papers for the purpose of ascertaining if any notice had 
been taken of this outrage against humanity. Here were 
fifty or seventy-five persons, men, women, and children, 
innocent as far as was known of any offence against any¬ 
body, enjoying themselves in the most solemn ceremony 
of life, and sixty men belonging to the army of the United 
States, and commanded by an officer authorized to speak 
and act for the United States, discharged their muskets 
upon those men, women, and children, and the bridegroom 
and the bride were slain, and died weltering in their own 
blood. As far as we know no notice has been taken of 
that event. What is the character of that proceeding? 
Is it in accordance with any system of recognized govern¬ 
ment? Do you expect the friends and countrymen of 
those who suffered in that massacre to accept our promises 
of justice in government, if otherwise they would accept 
our rule? 

I now read an account of the deportation of patriot 
Filipinos to the desert island of Guam by the order of the 
McKinley administration, through its military agents : 
“The scene was pathetic in the extreme. Many friends 
of the exiles feared to show their sympathy, and remained 
away, but wives, children, and sweethearts followed the 
ambulance to the wharf, weeping, shrieking, and tearing 
their hair in a frenzy of grief. Gray-headed women, 
mothers of some of the prisoners, ran barefooted in the 
dust of the road, tears streaming down their cheeks. Gen¬ 
eral Pilar bore these partings bravely until ordered to go 
aboard. Then he, too, a veteran, wept. Some of the exiles 
wore insurgents’ uniforms, but those of the higher ranks 
were mostly in civil dress. Just as the 4 Rosecranz’ was 
ready to leave, a Filipino, not an exile, was discovered in 
close consultation with his countrymen. He was arrested 
and sent ashore for investigation.” 

Following these brutalities of war, we are introduced to 
the President’s policy of peace. The inhabitants are to be 
driven into the towns, and those who escape are thereafter 
liable to be shot as insurgents. The enforced assembling 


20 


of the population of a country in its cities portends death 
to the aged, to the sick, to the children, to the weak and 
the helpless, while the vigorous manhood of the community, 
who are the objects of the policy, are the last and the least 
of the sufferers. The reconcentrado policy is at the head 
of a class of crimes against humanity of which four may 
be mentioned: 1, the poisoning of family wells and the 
water supply of cities; 2, the derailment of passenger 
trains as a means of inflicting injury on corporations; 3, 
the overboard practices of the ocean slave traders when 
brought into distress ; 4, the sacrifice by pirates of the 
crews of merchant vessels that had been seized. Thus 
has a policy of peace become more brutal than a policy of 
war. 

I have had occasion to investigate the doings of the slave 
ships on the mid-ocean passage, but if more barbarous 
tragedies have been enacted on the waters of the Atlantic 
the knowledge of them has been concealed from the 
public. 

It is an art of despotic governments, an art essential to 
the existence of despotic governments, that the facts on 
which public interest may centre shall be subordinated to 
circumstances as they may arisei 

When the presidential election was pending, the country 
was assured that the life of the insurrection in the Philip¬ 
pines was in the anti-imperialists of America, and that the 
defeat of Mr. Bryan would be followed in 60 days with 
submission, peace, and happiness in the islands. The 
President made himself responsible for the first part of 
the statement. In October votes for Mr. McKinley were 
needed. 

When the 60 days were ending votes were needed for 
the army bill. Fortunately for the administration, the 
condition of affairs in the islands was favorable to the 
policy at Washington, and Senator Sewell from the com¬ 
mittee on military affairs was able to say in January that 
the insurrection had reached a height that it had not at¬ 
tained at any time previous. To be sure, the predictions 
of October had been falsified, the truth of the declaration 
of peace which was made at the opening of the new year 
had not been vindicated, but destiny had come to the aid 
of the President, and the reasons for the passage of the 
army bill could no longer be resisted by any except those 
who were prepared to disgrace the country by the aban¬ 
donment of a contest in which we were engaged. The 
army bill has been passed, but insurrections are not sup- 


21 


pressed by array bills unless army bills are followed by 
recruits. 

Tlie debate, however, lmd been checkered by unwise re¬ 
marks from friends of the administration. The war, thoy 
said, might last a year, two years, five years, or ovon fifty 
years. The inhabitants were more hostile and more united 
in their hostility than they were in February, 1899. This 
was an unfortunate programme on which to enlist re¬ 
cruits. 

Happily by the llrst of February every incident was 
changed for the better. Destiny had again come to the 
relief of the administration. 

It had boon discovered that there were 90 tribes in the 
islands, and that 8H of them wore friendly to the United 
States. The fact concealed was this: The population of 
the eighty and eight was less than a fourth of the popu¬ 
lation of the two. In March the President was able to 
give this assurance to the country: We have millions of 
friends in the Philippines to thousands of enemies. In 
this statement arithmetic forces us to accept this result. 
We have 10,000,OOO friends in the Philippines and only 
10,000 enemies. A formidable body of uncivilized men, 
however, who through two years have terrorized 10,000,000 
natives and resisted, llrst 80,000, then 00,000, then 
80,000 American soldiers. 

We are giving a new lesson in freedom to our new 
44 wards” in tho system of civil government that we aro 
about to set up in the Philippine islands. Law courts and 
trial by Jury are abandoned. Thus two provisions of the 
constitution of the United States aro disregarded, and if 
the constitution extends to the islands then the scheme is 
a violation of that instrument. Citizens of the United 
States are guaranteed a trial by jury in all criminal causes 
and in all civil suits in which the paltry sum of twenty 
dollars may be involved. An inhabitant of the islands 
cannot command trial by jury even when his life is at 
stake. Ilis life is to depend upon the opinion of one 
judge, who can neither read, nor speak, nor understand 
the language which the accused speaks, and who is ignorant 
also of the customs of the country. Assume whatever of 
intelligence and good purposes we may choose to assume of 
the American Judges who may be stmt to the islands, we 
must also assume that the islanders will look upon them 
as enemies, as persecutors, as agents in a policy of des¬ 
potism and injustice. For ourselves there is no excuse. 
For President McKinley there is no defence. When he 


22 


denies to the islanders, as his scheme of civil government 
does deny to them, the privilege of the writ of habeus 
corpus, the right of trial by jury, when he compels them to 
submit to the judgment of one man in all that relates to 
life, liberty, and property, can any ambition seek for 
greater power, or can any despot covet larger authority 
and rule? 

The President’s promises are for America, but in the 
presence of the practices under them they can only be 
derided in Asia. 

If the inhabitants of the Philippines shall hear of our 
dealings with Cuba they will yet farther doubt the sincer¬ 
ity of the President, and they may come to doubt also the 
sincerity of Congress and of the people of the United 
States. 

We commemorated the nineteenth of April, 1898, as a 
day of freedom in the annals of America, and on the 
twentieth we volunteered a tender of independence and 
unqualified sovereignty to Cuba, whose freedom from 
the dominion of Spain we had proclaimed. In that pledge 
of freedom to Cuba the President and the Congress 
united, and with the general approval of the American 
people. We are now redeeming that pledge, and by what 
process? We demand concessions that are inconsistent 
with our pledge of independence and sovereignty. Let 
me read the demands as made by the administration 
through General Wood on Washington’s birthday anni¬ 
versary, 1901. 

First. No government organized under the constitu¬ 
tion shall be deemed to have authority to enter upon any 
treaty or engagement with any foreign power which may 
tend to impair the independence of Cuba or confer upon 
any such power any special right or privilege without the 
consent of the United States. 

Second. No government organized under the constitu¬ 
tion shall have the power to assume or contract any public 
debt except to the capacity of the ordinary revenues of 
the island after defraying current expenses and paying 
interest. 

Third. Upon the transfer of Cuba to the government 
organized under the constitution, Cuba consents that 
the United States shall retain the right to intervene for 
the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance 
of a stable government, adequately protecting property 
and individual liberty, and discharging the obligations 
with respect to Cuba, imposed by the treaty of Paris upon 


23 


the United States, now assumed by the government of 
Cuba. 

Fourth. All acts of the military government, and all 
rights acquired thereunder, shall be valid and shall be 
maintained and protected. 

Fifth. To facilitate the performance by the United 
States of such duties as devolve under the foregoing pro¬ 
visions, and for its own defence, the United States may 
acquire and hold land for naval stations and maintain the 
same. 

With these concessions yielded or extorted, will not 
Cuba have become a vassal state? By the first article its 
foreign trade will be in the hands of the United States. 
In the exercise of that power the United States may 
create or it may destroy industries ; it may give value to 
labor or it may make labor valueless ; it may enhance or 
it may cripple the resources of the country; and without 
much delay Cuba will be subjected to a Congress in which 
it will not be represented. 

Thus will Cuba have been made powerless for valid 
negotiations abroad, and for defence at home. Next, 
Cuba cannot enter upon any expenditure in excess of its 
ordinary resources, without the consent of the United 
States. How are railways to be built, public buildings to 
be erected, water systems to be created; how are towns 
and cities to be lighted and drained; in fine, how is Cuba 
to possess the advantages of modern civilization if the 
power to create a debt is denied? The answer of the ad¬ 
ministration is always the same : The United States will 
do what is right. Do you doubt your own government? 
By the third article we reserve the right to intervene, when¬ 
ever, in our opinion, the government is not stable, when¬ 
ever liberty and property are not protected, or whenever, 
in our opinion, Cuban independence shall be threatened. 

If such a power of supervision and intervention existed 
in our Congress over the States of this Union there would 
remain not even a shadow of that sovereignty which was 
once claimed for them. Under the third article the limits 
of the authority of the United States could be found only 
in the discretion of the government of the United States; 
in other words, in the policy and purposes of the party in 
power. 

Under Article 5 the government of the United States may 
set up naval stations on any land that it may acquire. 
Under this provision it may acquire heights and other 
strategic points by which the cities and ports of the island 


24 


can be brought under our control. Thus and in this man¬ 
ner are we keeping our pledge of 1898 — a pledge of un¬ 
conditional independence and full sovereignty to Cuba. 
Having thus violated the pledge that we made in April, 
1898, the President may expect Cuba to accept as good 
coin his new promise that all these powers will be exer- 
ercised in moderation, and that gratitude for what Amer¬ 
ica has done for Cuba should be recognized by unlimited 
confidence in the good purposes of America. A member 
of the cabinet defends these encroachments upon the sov¬ 
ereignty of Cuba as an application of the Monroe doc¬ 
trine. For the moment it is a satisfaction for me to 
believe that the profession of the law is in no wise respon¬ 
sible for that opinion. The Monroe doctrine was a declar¬ 
ation that the United States asserted the right to interfere 
in behalf of any American state whose sovereignty might 
be assailed by another power. 

We announced a purpose to protect American states 
against the injustice we are now to practise on Cuba. 
The Monroe doctrine was designed to protect American 
states from the injustice which we are imposing upon an 
embryo state which is powerless to defend itself. Thus 
does the administration subvert a policy of freedom and 
sovereignty in states into a policy by which strong states 
may tyrannize over the weaker ones upon the pretext of 
aiding and defending them. And thus is the administra¬ 
tion struggling to become a world power by alliances with 
the strong, as in the case of China, and by usurpations 
over the weak, as in Hawaii, Porto Rico, Cuba, and the 
Philippines. 

The policy of supremacy in Cuba may be, and probably 
it will be, a peril to the peace of the United States. For 
example, a protocol for a treaty of reciprocity between 
Cuba and Germany that should be disapproved by the 
United States might even end in war and an alliance be¬ 
tween Cuba and Germany. 

Let us first of all perform our obligations to Cuba in 
their fulness, and then, b\ T negotiations with Cuba, as a 
free, independent, and sovereign State, we may secure 
every concession that Cuba ought to make or that we 
ought to seek. No enforced concession from Cuba can 
compensate the American people for the wilful violation 
of the pledge of April, 1898. The purpose of the Presi¬ 
dent is so well known that there can be no hope for the 
honor of America or for justice to Cuba if the conduct of 
the measure shall be left in his hands. 


25 


If the suggestion I am now to make has not had a lodg¬ 
ment in the mind of the President, I may aid him in case 
his attempt to subjugate the Philippines should become 
hopeless, although I shall not aid him in putting the scheme 
into execution. The demand has been made in Congress 
and in the country that the Philippines should be put upon 
the basis of Cuba. If the terms named can be imposed 
upon Cuba with the approval of Congress and the consent 
of the country the President may accept like terms for the 
Philippines. Thus, upon the theory of the President, the 
Republic will have been far advanced as a world power, 
and thus the Republic will have taken on, irretrievably 
taken on, all the characteristics of an empire. 

1 give the President credit for having contemplated all 
this as the outcome of the policy that he is pursuing. 
Thus the steps by which the President seeks to advance 
the country to the rank of a world power aid him in like 
degree in his ambition to create an empire on the founda¬ 
tions of the Republic. The President has never faltered 
in his purpose. We can now trace his policy step by step 
from the 19th of April, when bv the declaration of war 
against Spain a way was opened for the execution of the 
ambitious designs of the President. 

The protocol of the 10th of August was innocent of 
any purpose to demand the Philippines as an essential of 
peace. Next, he took security for the ratification of the 
treaty of Paris by the appointment of senators upon the 
commission who as senators were to pass upon their own 
work. If it had then been his purpose to limit the scope 
of the treaty to the fulfilment of the object for which the 
war was undertaken — the freedom of Cuba— the treaty 
without surreptitious aid would have been ratified by a 
unanimous Senate. If the scope of the treaty had been 
limited to the freedom of Cuba there would have been 
neither occasion nor opportunity nor inducement for a 
member of the commission to change his opinion upon 
the question of demanding from Spain the cession of the 
Philippines. Spain yielded to the demand only when the 
President made it the one condition of peace, a condition 
which could not be waived nor changed. The constitu¬ 
tion of the commission is evidence conclusive that at that 
time the President had resolved upon the acquisition of 
the islands. On the 21st of December, 1898, when the 
treaty had not been ratified, the President issued his proc¬ 
lamation by which he assumed full jurisdiction over the 
islands, and demanded unconditional submission from the 



26 


people. This act on the part of the President precluded 
negotiations for the sovereignty and independence on the 
part of the native population. The proclamation assumed 
authority in one party and subserviency in the other 
party. From that day the Filipinos had only the choice 
between submission and war. By that act the President 
repudiated the relation of allies, and thus he became 
responsible for the war of February, 1899. When the 
war opened, and when time and eveuts had not embittered 
the Filipino population, the President refused to listen 
to Aguinaldo’s request for a cessation of hostilities. Thus 
the President refused a tender of peace, and thus he made 
the war inevitable. And for what purpose ? He then 
and by that proclamation foreclosed to the Filipinos all 
chance for sovereignty and independence, and prepared 
the way for the enforced annexation of the Philippines to 
the United States. Thus we are growing into a world 
power, and thus we are passing from a republic to an 
empire. 

Thus and by such means has the President gained con¬ 
trol of the islands as far as it can be exercised and 
enjoyed through military power. His final victory is in 
the army bill by which he is authorized to govern the mill¬ 
ions of the islands without any legal or constitutional re¬ 
straint resting upon him. 

From our example despotism itself in forms most feared 
may learn a new lesson in the art of ruling. 

We entered China as one of the world powers for the 
protection of our minister. That purpose was accom¬ 
plished many months ago, and yet we remain. Why? 
The President says the integrity of China ought not to be 
disturbed. In like manner he has said that our pledge to 
Cuba is to be kept. That pledge has been in his keeping, 
and with what result? Why does the President retain his 
hold upon Pekin ? The answer must be this : As a world 
power we were of the allies that achieved the conquest of 
the city. If China is to be divided why should not the 
United States as a world power and as one of the allies take 
a share in the fruits of the conquest? By what authority 
did the President make war upon China, a nation with 
which we were at peace? Had he any purpose in view but 
the acquisition of more territory ? And now that our 
minister is secure, and when the missionaries have had 
an opportunity to leave the country, can the President 
have any other motive for remaining at Pekin than greed 
of territory and lust for power? A fragment of our army 


27 


is to remain in Pekin, but not to prevent a division of the 
empire, but to share in it, if division shall become inevit¬ 
able. 

I shall not continue the inquiry whether we are more or 
less a world power than we were in 1897, but of this I am 
assured : In 1897 we were a republic and in 1901 we are 
an empire. Mark the steps by which the change has 
been wrought. First in point of time we annexed Hawaii, 
a country that had been seized by a minority. In the 
system that we have there set up we have disfranchised a 
large body of those who had theretofore participated in 
the government, and we have made the possession of 
property a condition of holding office. Thus have we 
trampled down the doctrine of popular government and 
denied the equality of men. 

We have secured from England and Germany exclusive 
jurisdiction of islands in the Samoan group, where we are 
engaged in keeping the peace by the presence of a naval 
force. 

Porto Pico has been annexed unconditionally. In that 
island we have a civil government that has been created 
by the order of the President. 

In disregard of our pledge of freedom and soven 
to Cuba we are imposing on that island conditions of 
colonial vassalage. 

The Island of Guam has been made a penal colony and 
one person, whose name has become historical, has been 
deported by a military order without a trial and without an 
opportunity for defence. 

Finally Congress has given the President full power to 
govern Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines, and in 
none of these vast possessions can the people appeal either 
to the constitution or the laws of the United States. 

Has power more unlimited been exercised by any des¬ 
pot in any age or country? We .may not as yet doubt 
the disposition of the country to do what is right, but in 
these facts there is ground for denying to President 
McKinley the purpose to do what is right. The question 
is not, as the President would have the country believe, 
whether we can conquer the Philippine islands; the ques¬ 
tion is not whether we have power to make Cuba a vassal 
State ; the question is this : Are we justified in the attempt 
to do either? 

It is a boast of the President’s inaugural address that 
we have become a world power and that we are taking a 
part in the affairs of the world, and boastfully he asks 


ereignty / 
ions of V 


28 


this question : “ Are we to shrink in the presence of the 
great duty to which we are called?” In 1897 we were 
respected in all countries. We were not hated by the 
powerful states of the world nor feared by the weaker 
ones. Taxation was moderate, and the maximum of the 
army was only one-fourth of what it now is. The Presi¬ 
dent says we are at peace with all the world, but the army 
and the navy are on a war footing, and the support of the 
army and navy has added 25. or 30 per cent, to our taxes. 

The great Republic has become au object of fear to 
every other American state. They are witnesses to 
the seizure and they forecast the fate of Hawaii, Porto 
Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines. We have made enemies 
of Russia and the Chinese Empire, the great markets of 
the future. Already our policy in the East has touched 
unfavorably our industries in America. The President 
boasts that the progress of America has been marked by 
beneficence and justice. Yes, but our strength has been 
in our example and not through force. Until now we 
have never attempted to compel existing communities into 
a state of pupilage and vassalage. We have waited until 
they were prepared to accept our ideas and system of gov¬ 
ernment. In two instances we eradicated evils within our 
own recognized jurisdiction, but never previous to 1898 
have we attempted to compel other people to accept our 
forms of goodness. We abolished slavery by force and 
we prohibited polygamy by law. Both, whether they are 
crimes or only evils, are tolerated and pensioned in the 
Philippine islands. 

The President claims that he did all that in honor could 
be done to avert the war, but without avail. Thus he 
puts the responsibility for the war upon Congress. But 
Congress did not prepare the protocol; Congress did not 
demand the surrender of the Philippines as a sine qua non 
of a treaty of peace ; Congress did not authorize the issue 
of the proclamation of Dec. 21, 1898, which made war in 
the Philippines inevitable ; Congress did not authorize the 
rejection with contumely of Aguinaldo’s proffer of peace 
made in the early days of February, 1899 ; and above all, 
Congress did not authorize the invasion of China, a nation 
with which we were at peace. 

The Republican party in Congress has ratified some of 
these doings and it has sanctioned all of them. The 
President and the Republican party are now alike respon¬ 
sible. No one can state an account current between the 
people of the United States and this war. 


29 


A few items on the debit side may be named : 

Increased expenditures, $500,000,000. 

Increased taxation in a like sum. 

A heavy pension roll that will run for half a century. 

A loss of many thousand American citizens, who fell in 
battle or died in hospitals. 

Other thousands who have been sent home insane or 
otherwise diseased. 

Finally, the brutalizing of all who have participated in 
the war in the Philippines. 

The administration can only file in set-off this altruis¬ 
tic proposition : We intend to carry to these people better 
ideas of life, better institutions of government, a better 
religion, whenever they shall be prepared to receive these 
great gifts submissively at our hands. For this end, an 
end manifestly uncertain, improbable indeed in the high¬ 
est degree, the American people are sacrificing blood, and 
treasure, and the good name of the Republic throughout 
the world. 

Shall the policy of President McKinley be continued ? 
Or shall it be abandoned, and a policy of power through 
peace and justice be substituted for a policy of empire 
through war, conquest, and the enslavement of mankind? 

If there has been any betrayal of the American consti¬ 
tution, if the principles of human liberty have been 
trampled down in these four years, the author is Presi¬ 
dent McKinley, and for his conduct the Republican party 
has assumed full responsibility. What, then, is the rem¬ 
edy? My answer is this: The overthrow of President 
McKinley through the defeat of the Republican party. 
This accomplished, and the policy of aggression, of con¬ 
quest, and of war will have come to an end. Decisions 
of the courts can be avoided. Wars can be waged, ter¬ 
ritories can be conquered, states can be seized, taxes can 
be imposed, debts can be created, and courts must remain 
silent as to all these undertakings. The policy must be 
interrupted, the policy must be reversed. Of relief 
through the Republican party there is no prospect—not 
the least, even. On the 17th of April, 1900, the party, 
as an organization, was not committed to the policy of 
empire. On the 4th of March, 1901, the Republican 
party was irretrievably bound by the policy of President 
McKinley, and to-day there are not twenty representative 
Republicans of official standing who dissent publicly from 
that policy. Hence, it is that the Republican party must 
be destroyed, and with its destruction the policy of empire 
will have come to an end. 


30 


Its successor, however organized, and by whatever 
name called, will be pledged to the unconditional freedom 
of Cuba,*Porto Rico, and the Philippines. And thus the 
Republic may come to live again through an experience 
that may have cost a thousand million dollars, and^fifty 
or a hundred thousand American lives. 


31 


HR. GEORGE GLUYAS ITERCER. 

“ When liberty is in danger, Faneuil hall has the right, 
it is her duty, to strike the keynote for these United 
States.” These, citizens of Boston, were the words ut¬ 
tered in this hall by your son, Wendell Phillips, some 
three and sixty years ago, in the first speech he ever made 
here — a speech to be followed by many others made by 
the same champion of human freedom in this same sacred 
place. Two generations before that these walls had an¬ 
swered to the appeals of Revolutionary patriots, and in 
those days Philadelphia and Boston stood side by side in 
the struggle for independent self-government, and I deem 
it a high honor to-night to have the privilege of standing 
here to bring you greeting from Independence Hall. 

It is my conviction that the fathers of our Republic pro¬ 
claimed to the world not only a profound principle of po¬ 
litical philosophy, but also a fundamental principle of 
social evolution, when they declared that governments 
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. 
All political and social progress since that time has been 
in accordance with that principle, and we are here to-night 
to demand that wherever our flag goes that principle shall 
go with it, to distinguish our republic from the empires of 
Europe. Governor Boutwell has adverted to the criticism 
sometimes made that we have not been faithful to that 
principle in the cases of women, and negroes, and Indians. 
As for the women, they give submissive assent to the 
present government. When they unite in demanding 
rights equal to those of men, which I, for one, believe 
they ought to have, they will get those rights. As for the 
negroes, our civil war lifted them to the plane of citizen¬ 
ship, and any attempt now made to deprive them of their 
constitutional rights is wrong. As for the Indians, our 
treatment of them has properly been called “ a centuiy of 
dishonor,” but we have never treated them as badly as we 
are now treating the Filipinos. We have recognized their 
nationality and made treaties with them, and have behaved 
toward them far more nobty than toward our former allies 
in Luzon. But granting that we have not done our duty 
in these cases, is that any argument for a continuance of 
the wrong-doing? Because a man breaks one command¬ 
ment, shall he disregard the entire decalogue? “ Be ye 


32 


therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven 
is perfect.” What did Christ mean by that? Not, I take 
it, that perfection was attainable by all, but rather that 
perfection was the ideal for which all should strive. 
When the American fathers declared that governments 
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, 
they set that up as a standard. They believed that the 
nation that did most toward reaching that standard would 
attain the nearest degree to political perfection. Prior to 
the Philippine war America kept ever before her this 
lofty ideal of the Declaration. As the years went by she 
succeeded in making the ideal more and more nearly real. 
Did the Constitution make an exception to the rule in its 
provision as to slavery ? Are we always faithful to the 
principle to-day? As applied to the situation in the Phil¬ 
ippines, I care not how these questions are answered. 
They are beside the mark. What we protest against is 
that the government has deliberately abandoned that ideal 
in the Philippines and set up another policy. This eight¬ 
eenth century political philosophy which Jefferson em¬ 
bodied in the Declaration of Independence — is it true? 
Is it what Lincoln said its author meant it to be — ‘‘a 
stumbling-block to all those who in after times might seek 
to turn a free people back into the paths of despotism?” 
Is it still an ideal for twentieth-century America, freer and 
more prosperous than in the days of her youth? Or has 
plutocracy bred tyrants, and must we give up our ancient 
faith? I see there are some who still believe in the prin¬ 
ciple. We believe it the highest duty to strive to bring 
the Republic back to the ideals of her youth, and we shall 
not cease in our endeavor while life lasts. 

When the administration first entered upon this im¬ 
perialist policy the man who taught me political economy 
at Yale College, Prof. William G. Sumner, published an 
article entitled “ The Conquest of the United States by 
Spain.” Professor Sumner had no intention at that time 
of assuming the role of prophet. He meant merely to 
indicate that the administration had entered upon the 
path which had brought Spain to ruin. Subsequent 
events, however, have shown that no paper ever had a 
truer title. The Spanish conquest of our country has 
steadily continued. Beginning with the denial to the 
Filipinos of their independence, it has gone on step by 
step until the Filipinos have to-dav toward us the same feel¬ 
ing of intense resentment that they formerly felt toward 
the Spaniards. We protested against the reconcentrado 


33 


method of a Spanish general who was called a butcher, 
in Cuba. We have adopted the same method in the 
Philippines. u He has transported us beyond seas to be 
tried for pretended offences.” That was one of the counts 
in the indictment against George III. as made in our 
Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia. We have 
established a penal colony in Guam, and the most noted 
man to be banished is he whom Admiral Dewey calls the 
brains of the Philippine insurrection, Mabini, too weak to 
fight; Mabini in Manila, which is under the control of 
the American forces if there is any place which is; 
Mabini in prison, where one would think he could do no 
harm; Mabini paralyzed, but, in spite of all this, ban¬ 
ished because he would not renounce his love of liberty 
and swear allegiance to the United States. Was there 
any fear that this paralytic could make forcible resistance 
to American authority? Was he banished lest he might 
escape from prison? No. He was banished because 
God’s truth was on his lips, and because the administra¬ 
tion feared the indignation of the civilized world over the 
hypocrisy masquerading in the name of American liberty. 
But this is not all. American soldiers are killing wounded 
and unresisting Filipino prisoners. Do you doubt it? 
Read the statistics cited by George Kennan in his papers 
written for the “ Outlook.” Remember that that relig¬ 
ious periodical has been an administration organ, and that 
the President has had no more able defender than its 
editor, Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott. 



The support which imperialism is receiving from vested. 
interests and so-called Christian pulpits reminds one of a 
similar support given to the cause of slavery in the days 
of our fathers. Again I am reminded of Wendell Phil¬ 
lips. As he appealed, after John Brown’s raid, “ from 
the American people drunk with cotton, and the ‘ New 
York Observer,’ to the American people fifty years hence,” 
so may we appeal from the American people, drunk with 
the lust of conquest, and the “ New York Outlook,” to 
the American people when the light of history and civil¬ 
ization has at length made clear that militarism and 
democracy cannot abide together. 

But the Spanish conquest of our Republican administra¬ 
tion continues. We are now resorting to Spanish inquisito¬ 
rial methods to compel silent prisoners to speak or reluctant 
witnesses to testify. An officer of our regular army, 
now serving in Luzon, has given in a letter details of the 
“ water torture,” which are too horrible to repeat. Gen- 


34 


eral Sherman was right when he said that tk War is hell,” 
but the war in which lie fought was not disgraced by any 
such atrocities as those just related as taking place in the 
islands of the Pacific, until one may well exclaim: “ 0 
liberty ! how many crimes are commited in thy name.” 

The culmination of the conquest of the United States 
by Spain was reached the other day when the Filipino 
leader was made a prisoner. It has been truly said that 
war legalizes nearly every practice that is held in abhor¬ 
rence by civilized men in time of peace. I am not suffi¬ 
ciently familiar with military tactics and military ethics 
to enable me to say whether forgery, which would land a 
civilian in the penitentiary, is approved by military regu¬ 
lations, and I shall not waste time in any criticism of the 
trickery and strategem bv which Aguinaldo was deceived. 
Since coming into this hall I have been told by a gentle¬ 
man on this platform of a remark made at dinner to-day 
by an American army officer to the effect that he was glad 
no West Point graduate had anything to do with the capt¬ 
ure of Aguinaldo, which he regarded as a disgrace to 
American arms. It may be worth while to remember that 
of the capturing party five only were Americans, three 
were Tagalogs, and seventy-eight were Macabebes, who, 
as Colonel Codman has said, are now allies of the United 
States as they were formerly allies of Spain, and who, 
as Governor Bout well has said, are savage mercenaries 
in the employ of our government. The report tells us 
that one of the Filipino traitors had been shot through 
the lungs in a recent battle in which he was taken 
prisoner. What threats of torture and punishment and 
what promises of reward induced these Filipino prisoners 
to turn traitors we can only guess. Until we know we 
cannot justly estimate their guilt. My desire is merely 
to call attention to the fact that it was not until the 
Spanish officer, apparently in command of the party, 
said : “ Now, Macabebes, go for them ! ” that the Judas 
who betrayed Aguinaldo threw his arms about the leader 
and said : “ You are a prisoner of the Americans.” I 
take this from Funston’s story of the capture, as printed 
in the daily papers. So it was by command of a Spanish 
officer that Aguinaldo was captured at last. This was the 
culmination of the conquest of the United States by 
Spain. What could be more pathetic than the statement 
in Funston’s report that Aguinaldo dispatched supplies to 
the party, and directed kind treatment of the five Ameri¬ 
cans who were advancing to make him prisoner, and who, 


35 


he thought, were prisoners in the hands of his own men. 

We may be able to give points to the Filipinos on forgery 
and strategem, but they can give us points on the elemen¬ 
tary and fundamental principles of Christianity. For my 
part, I would rather be the commander-in-chief of the 
Filipino forces, fighting for home and liberty and inde¬ 
pendence against great odds, and now at last a prisoner 
through strategem, than be the commander-in-chief of the 
Americau forces, sworn to uphold and defend the consti¬ 
tution of the United. States, and now directing a war 
against the fundamental principles of human liberty. 

44 If this be treason, make the most of it.” My brethren 
are men of whatever color and in whatever place, who are 
fighting for liberty and self-government. My foes are 
they who betray the sacred principles to which our fathers 
pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred 
honor. 

The chairman of this meeting has alluded to the apathy -\J 
of the American people on this great question. To my 
mind this is our greatest danger. If the President of the 
United States should boldly proclaim the empire, there is 
no doubt as to the answer of the people. /Imperialism is 
making progress among us, just as it did in ancient Rome, 
by gradual stages, and without any clear conception on 
the part of the people of the trend of affairs. Men who 
love their country as dearly as we do, and who hate 
tyranny as bitterly, cannot be persuaded that there is 
danger to our institutions from the forcible imposition 
upon an alien race of what they regard as a superior civ- 
ilization. They cannot see that benevolent assimilation \J 
is as false in principle as criminal aggression. They think 
that if- there be imperialism there must be an imperator, 
and, as they read the honeyed words of presidential papers, 
they can find no Caesar in 44 the mildest mannered man 
that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.” But the essence 
of empire is absolutism. It makes no difference, so far 
as the existence of the empire is concerned, whether the 
absolute power is administered benevolently or malig¬ 
nantly, or whether it is wielded b}^ one man or by many. 
Free government is by consent of the governed. Gov¬ 
ernment without responsibility to the governed is imperial. 

It is in this sense that Governor Boutwell finds an empire 
already in existence in the Philippines, where the people 
have no voice, and where the President rules ten million 
souls by the strong arm of military force, and without 
any constitutional restraint. How thankful the American 


36 


people should be that this grand old man, Governor Bout- 
well, retains mental vigor and physical strength sufficient 
to enable him to do the work he is doing to-day. Great 
as were the services he rendered to this, his native State, 
and to the entire nation, in days gone by, he is doing his 
grandest work after he has passed his four-score years. 
My colleagues in Philadelphia bid me say that they are 
thankful for the inspiration of his example. To me he 
seems the Michael Angelo of American statesmen, be¬ 
wailing the decay of his country’s liberties, but doing all 
within his powder to make that country’s name illustrious. 
On one point, however, I beg leave to differ from Gov¬ 
ernor Boutwell. If I had my way, no one would call the 
McKinley party by the name Republican, a name hallowed 
by its association with the names of the great men who 
freed the slave and saved the Union. “ No man is good 
enough to govern another man without that other’s con¬ 
sent, — this is the leading principle, the sheet anchor of 
American republicanism.” This is the definition of the 
word “ republican” as made by Abraham Lincoln, and no 
man has a right to that party name who is false to that 
fundamental principle. 

For my part I am not disposed to underestimate the 
strength of the forces against us. We are met just after 
the army bill has given the President absolute power over 
the Philippines, after the capture of the leader of the 
army of liberty, and when the war budget of our own 
nation is greater in amount than that of any of the mil¬ 
itary nations of the old world. Under these depressing 
circumstances there is the one supreme duty for us, and 
that is to make no compromise of American principles. 

It has been said here this evening that the power- of the 
United States is so tremendous as to leave no doubt of 
the ultimate outcome of this struggle. The Filipinos, it 
is said, must eventually yield to our force. If it is a 
‘mere question of brute strength, this is undoubtedly true. 
We have the soldiers and the ships and the guns and the 
money. We have the giant’s strength and may use it 
like a giant. We can kill and torture and devastate, and 
then announce that the war is over. We can hold terri¬ 
tory by force of arms and call it peace. That may all 
happen and yet the final victory may be with the Filipi¬ 
nos. u The race is not always to the swift, nor the bat¬ 
tle to the strong.” The long view gives the clearest 
vision. To his contemporaries there was never a greater 
failure than that of the Nazarene on the cross. I began 


37 


my remarks with a reference to Wendell Phillips, and it 
was he who said: “One, on God’s side, is a majority.” 
Let me leave with you in the present crisis those inspiring 
words of your poet, Lowell, which Phillips has quoted 
more than once within these walls: 

“ Right forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne 
But that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. 
We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, 
Slow of faith, how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, 
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market’s din, 

List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within, — 
They enslave their children’s children who make compromise 
with sin.” 


38 


SENOR SIXTO LOPEZ. 

Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen : It would 
be impossible, in the time allotted to me, to attempt any¬ 
thing in the form of a complete statement of the cause of 
my countrymen. But it is natural that you should expect 
me to say something about the capture of Aguinaldo and 
the official and other reports which have recently come 
from the Philippines. 

I am sorry that the gallant soldier who has led our 
people through the former insurrection and the present 
war, the man who never accepted a bribe and never offered 
one, and who, in the closing hour of his military career 
vindicated his own character from the charges of cruelty 
that have been made against him, by ordering that the sup¬ 
posed American prisoners should be treated kindly — I am 
sorry that he has been captured. But whilst I admit this 
sorrow, I believe that his capture will have a beneficial 
effect rather than a baneful one upon our cause generally. 
The defence of our rights and of our homes will continue 
with undiminished force, and Aguinaldo’s mantle will fall 
upon one of the many excellent generals now in the field. 
Whether Aguinaldo be kept in prison, deported to Guam, 
or allowed to come to America, the people will remain 
faithful to him in his absence even more than in his pres¬ 
ence. But what is of more importance still, they will be 
faithful to the aspirations for which he fought, and for 
which they will continue to fight. 

From the reports which during the past month have 
come from the Philippines the uninformed reader might 
be led to infer that the “war was nearly over;” that 
actual progress is being made in the so-called “ pacifica¬ 
tion of the islands; ” and that the Filipinos are submitting 
to American sovereignty with a cheerful desire to obtain 
those constitutional rights which the Administration de¬ 
clares were never intended for its foreign subjects. But 
I think I shall be able to show you that the conditions are 
practically the same as heretofore, and that in so far as 
any of these reports are true they indicate not a real but 
only an apparent change. 

It should be remembered that this is the dry season in 
the Philippines, during w T hich the Filipino forces are least, 
and the American forces are most active. Every dry 


39 


season since the war began has had its accompaniment of 
optimistic predictions as to the war being at an end. But 
in order to discover whether any real progress is being 
made it is necessary to take the mean of results obtained 
during both the dry and the rainy season. Much, if not 
indeed all, that is now being done will be undone during 
the rainy season. This has occurred so often in the past 
as to entirely disprove the contention that “ a thing once 
done cannot be undone ! ” It is better not to shout until 
one is out of the woods. 

It should be noted, too, that every item or fact at all 
favorable to the policy of forcible subjugation is collected 
in most cases in a very exaggerated form, and transmitted 
with all possible speed to this country, whilst facts 
which tell in an opposite direction may not receive the 
same attention, and may have to wait for the slower 
process of delivery by mail. But allowing for all these 
advantages on the side of those who desire and who have 
need to make much out of little, these reports do not indi¬ 
cate a real change in the condition of affairs. 

You are aware that quite recently a new and more 
rigorous system of warfare has been adopted in the Philip¬ 
pines. Instead of holding a large number of outposts and 
maintaining authority within rifle range, as has been 
stated, the American forces have been concentrated in 
certain places. By this means the capture or surrender of 
small bodies of Filipinos has resulted, but as against this 
the area of American occupation has been proportionally 
decreased, and the abandoned outposts have fallen into 
the hands of the Filipinos. This latter fact has not been 
telegraphed to America. 

It is certainly a serious matter for the Filipinos to have 
some of their rifles captured, but on the other hand they 
frequently capture small convoys during the rainy season, 
and thus not only make good the loss but add to their 
supply of arms and ammunition. This is another fact not 
usually sent in telegraphic despatches. But the result in 
both of these cases leaves the condition of affairs practi¬ 
cally what it was before. 

Then again, you will notice that many of these reports 
recount the capture of “armed” Filipinos. This does 
not necessarily mean the capture of rifles. In some cases 
the reader has been left to infer that the whole of the cap¬ 
tured force had been armed with rifles, whereas only a few 
of the number mentioned possessed these weapons. Other 
reports mention the capture or the surrender of so many 


40 


hundreds of “bolo-men.” The latter word looks quite 
imposing in half-inch type. But it is not generally known 
in America that the bolo is a household and an agricult¬ 
ural implement, and that it is not a weapon, although it 
is often used as such with telling effect. Every farm 
laborer and house carpenter possesses and constantly car¬ 
ries with him the ever useful bolo. There is not a house¬ 
hold in the Philippines that does not possess several bolos- 
The cost of the bolo is about fifty cents, bait there are those 
“made in Germany” which can be had for half that 
amount. There are probably between two and three 
millions of “bolo-men” in our country engaged in peace¬ 
ful pursuits. 

It is therefore possible for the American forces to capt¬ 
ure thousands of farm laborers who had never struck a 
blow for their country, but who would be described as 
“ bolo-men,” and who would thus serve the purpose of 
those who desire to chronicle brilliant military victories. 

But it is also reported that numbers of Filipinos are 
taking the oath of allegiance. I have reason to believe 
that many of these Filipinos are made to do duty more 
than once in this process of. pacification. They are first 
reported as having “ surrendered ; ” later on they are re¬ 
ported to have “ taken the oath of allegiance,” and the 
reader is left to infer that these statements refer to two 
different lots of Filipinos. Some of those who have first 
“ surrendered” and then “ taken the oath” subsequently 
join the Federal Party and thus do duty a third time. 
But they soon get tired of American rule, and most of 
them secede during the rainy season. They are, perhaps, 
captured a second time, and are made to go through the 
whole treble process again. Many of them are musicians, 
and it is probable that some of these'sextuply subdued 
Filipinos take a turn in the brass band when Judge Taft 
comes along to establish civil government, and thus do 
duty a seventh time. Surrendering is probably becoming 
a fine art and a profession in the Philippines. Whether 
it pays I know not, but it certainly supplies the means of 
making the most out of the smallest stock of material. 

But seriously, the number of those who, under pressure 
or hardship, have taken the oath of so-called allegiance to 
a sovereignty which they outwardly accept but inwardly 
despise, forms a very small proportion of the ten millions 
of people who are openly opposed to foreign rule of any 
kind. It should be remembered that if these new and 
more rigorous methods of so-called “warfare” had been 


41 


put into operation at any time during the last two years 
the same or even a larger number could have been com¬ 
pelled to take the oath. But allegiance obtained under a 
threat of deportation or something worse is not allegiance 
at all; it is simply perjury at the point of the bayonet, 
and is no more morally binding than a signature to a 
cheque obtained by presenting a pistol at the head of the 
signer. The time, however, will come when those who 
have been compelled to take thus the oath will greatly out¬ 
number the American forces and then the house of cards 
will once more tumble to the ground. 

But there is a terribly tragic side to all of these reports. 
Very few persons in this country realize what it costs to 
obtain the enforced allegiance of even these few thousands 
of Filipinos. My lips are sealed in regard to this aspect 
of the question, but some day the truth will be known, 
and I can only pray that it will be known soon. In the 
meantime, or until a wiser or a juster policy is adopted, 
our people will have to continue to suffer. But let no one 
be deceived into the belief that permanent peace can be 
restored in the Philippines by force of arms, or by any 
other process however cruel or unjust. If cruelty could 
have subjugated the Filipinos they would have been sub¬ 
jugated ere this. 

The establishment of civil government at a time when 
the American military forces are about to be increased, 
and when honest patriots like Mabini are being deported 
to Guam, ought, I think, to arouse your suspicion. Such 
civil government could have been established with a much 
greater show of success eighteen months ago. The brass 
band and the enthusiastic crowd ought not to be taken too 
seriously. Brass bands are cheap in the Philippines where 
music is so universal, and I have no doubt that much of 
the supposed enthusiasm is purposely indulged in by the 
people in order to throw dust in the eyes of those who are 
willing if not anxious to be deceived. But there is one 
important fact which the authorities have overlooked in 
their anxiety to do something which they fondly hope will 
satisfy the Filipinos. If this civil government is to be 
real; if it is not to be civil in name but military in fact; 
if it will give liberty of speech, and the right of associa¬ 
tion and petition, you will find that the Filipinos will make 
good use of these rights. Those who are now claiming 
that our people are illiterate and that a majority of them 
are in favor of American rule will soon discover that the 
Filipinos really can read and write, and that petitions in 


42 


favor of independence will be signed in every town and 
hamlet throughout the archipelago, including those of the 
“completely pacified” island of Panay. They will find 
that largely attended meetings in favor of independence 
will be held in the city of Manila itself, comprising those 
who have been compelled to temporarily submit to Ameri¬ 
can authority. There will, indeed, be many surprises in 
store for those who are so anxious to establish civil gov¬ 
ernment. The Filipinos being in favor of independence 
will require no brass bands, or oaths of allegiance, or co¬ 
ercion, or deportation, or military horrors to convert them 
to a belief in Filipino rule. I do not ask you to take my 
word for it, or the opinion of Judge Taft or General Mac- 
Arthur. You have only to use your own common sense, 
and it will tell you that there is not a people in this world 
who would willingly submit to be governed by a foreign 
nation. You have only to ask yourselves, would you be 
satisfied with any government, however good, provided 
by a foreign master? You know that you would be pre¬ 
pared to suffer the same pain and horror that the Filipinos 
are now suffering, in order to keep your star-spangled 
banner in the heavens. The Filipinos resemble you in 
that one sentiment at least. As long as they retain their 
manhood and their self-respect they will never submit to 
a master, however good or benevolently inclined he may be. 

Emblazoned upon your banner are the stars of freedom. 
We have chosen the sun as an emblem for our little flag, 
which is as dear to us as yours is to you. But if your 
stars ever float in undisputed sway in our sky it will be 
because our sun has set forever. Ma} 7 God protect us 
from such a calamity ! 

Mr. Chairman, as this is probably the last occasion for 
the present on which I shall address a public audience in 
America, I should like to take the opportunity of thanking 
the people of this country generally for the liberty which 
they have accorded to me in coming to plead the cause of 
my people. I beg, also, to thank the friends of freedom, 
both far and near, who are fighting in the cause of justice 
for your country as well as for mine. Especially do I 
thank the Anti-Imperialist Leagues in this country, the 
New England Anti-Imperialist League, to all of whom my 
countrymen will remain forever indebted. With your per¬ 
mission I should like to publicly thank Mr. Fiske Warren 
for the great assistance lie has given, and will continue to 
give, our cause and our people. If I live until my hair is 
as white as his face I shall never forget his kindness to 


43 


me, and what he has done for my fellow-countrymen. I 
desire, also, to thank the press of this great country, and 
especially of this city, for its courtesy to me. And I 
cannot leave America without a word of farewell to those 
opponents, who, I regret to say are somewhat numerous, 
but who are decreasing every day. Some day I hope to 
return and be able to thank all the people of America for 
justice and for the recognition of the independence of the 
Philippine Republic. 


44 


THE HON. ROBERT IT. HORSE. 

The present attitude of the administration towards 
Cuba is the latest development of the policy of aggression 
and conquest towards weak peoples, and of the denial of 
their right to be free which the President has been 
steadily pursuing for the last three years. If this policy 
did not originate with him it was early adopted by him, 
and he has followed it, now with seeming reluctance and 
now with open assertion, at one time claiming that he 
was driven to it by the pressure of circumstances and of 
public opinion, which could not be disregarded, and at 
another time exulting in the fact that he had effected 
these momentous changes, but always supporting it, 
always employing the enormous power at his command to 
throw down the ideals of a century, to reverse the policy 
under which our government was born and has flourished ; 
and to place us before the world as a great, vulgar, 
greedy nation, inflated with material prosperity and grab¬ 
bing territory wherever it could be wrested from a weaker 
people, regardless in the selfish promotion of our material 
interests, of the rights of others, of the great names, the 
high standards, and the noble objects which have con¬ 
stituted the glory of the nation. What political party 
four years ago would have dared to proclaim that we 
could acquire territory for any other purpose than of 
eventual!} 7 making it into states in which the inhabitants 
should be as free as ourselves, and should be entitled to 
the equal protection and benefits of the constitution, or 
that we should raise a great army and navy for purposes 
of conquest and aggrandizement? What power of elo¬ 
quence or subtlety of reasoning would have then enabled 
any public man to convince the people that the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence was a series of glittering general¬ 
ities, appropriate enough as the expression of the rights 
of the white inhabitants of the thirteen rebellious colonies 
one hundred and twenty-five years ago, but having no 
application to brown men or black men in these modern 
days, who are seeking in their own way and by their 
own lights and without injury or threat to any one else 
to work out their education, elevation, and indepen¬ 
dence? And yet to a large extent, that change has been 
effected. The power of the administration and of the in- 


45 


fluences, both political and commercial, which are allied 
with it, has been exerted in every direction to mould and 
control public opinion, and to silence opposition to its 
views and its purposes. The Democratic party, to its 
credit it may be said, has resolutely declared against this 
new policy, and here and there an independent press and 
an independent pulpit have spoken, but the machinery of 
the Republican party has been used with remorseless 
power to crush any questioning or objection, and a large 
part of the men claiming to be Christian clergymen have 
denied their professions, in upholding the killing of thou¬ 
sands who have done no wrong and against whom we 
have no just cause of complaint, the devastation of a 
country, the spoliation and destruction of property, the 
imprisonment and exile of patriots, the torturing of peace¬ 
ful inhabitants, and the declaration to millions of people, 
who have been striving through centuries to be free, that 
they must surrender their hopes of independence or die. 

It is idle to say that Providence or accident or destiny 
or any other cause outside of our own deliberate and wil¬ 
ful acts have brought about the present condition of 
things. There will always be two opinions as to whether 
we were justiAed in making war on Spain. That Spain 
had misgoverned Cuba and had treated the Cubans with 
cruelty and injustice cannot be doubted. That the 
Cubans were justiAed in rebelling cannot be doubted, but 
there is the highest authority for believing that the exer¬ 
cise of more consideration on our part would have accom¬ 
plished within a short time and by peaceful methods the 
relinquishment by Spain of her claim of dominion. But 
the country had been lashed into fury by men, some of 
whom honestly believed that nothing but war could accom¬ 
plish the desired result, and some of whom desired and 
intended that nothing but war should be allowed to result. 
The President threw off his assumed reluctance to engage 
in war, took the lead in urging a great appropriation 
which was intended and was understood to be a threat of 
war, sent a message to Spain, which no nation could re¬ 
ceive without resenting — and the war came. Its declared 
purpose, the sole purpose which at that time could have 
enlisted general support, was to free Cuba from the yoke 
of Spain, and to enable its inhabitants to establish an inde¬ 
pendent government. It was a movement in the interest 
of humanity, so it was claimed, dictated by no selAsh 
motives, with no thought af aggrandizement for ourselves, 
and with the express declaration that no portion of Cuban 


46 


territory, and, therefore, no portion of any territory, — for 
Cuba was then the only country whose territory it could 
be conceived was involved, —should be taken by us. The 
war quickly closed with the destruction of Spanish power 
in Cuba. Then was the time for our government, if it 
had been true to its professions, to have given the world 
the most splendid example of national disinterestedness 
recorded in history, and to have established a new stand¬ 
ard for the conduct of nations, worthy of the Republic, by 
declaring in its treaty with Spain that, as it had entered 
upon the war solely to set free the Cubans, it would accept 
the withdrawal of Spain from Cuba as a satisfactory 
settlement. If our government had then taken that posi¬ 
tion it would have earned the undying gratitude of 
Cubans, of Porto Ricans, of Filipinos, of peoples in all 
parts of the world, who had looked to this country as the 
leader in every movement for the advance of humanity, 
and it would have given us the opportunity to aid these 
weak and struggling nations in establishing themselves, 
and to secure their permanent friendship. Such a course 
would have been consistent with our traditions and our 
professions; it would have involved no bloodshed, no 
devastation of homes, no violation of the rights and liber¬ 
ties Qf others, and even as a commercial venture it would 
have been the most profitable enterprise in which the 
country had ever engaged. We should have been saved 
the terrible record of the last two years, the enormous 
sacrifices of life and property, the necessity of a great 
army and navy, and the shattering of faith in the honesty 
and consistency of the American republic. 

But the President willed it otherwise and he has gradually 
brought to his support a large portion, if not a majority, of 
the country. He instructed his Commissioners to demand 
of Spain the cession of Porto Rico and the Philippines, 
and in the tolie of a despot he declared his purpose long 
before the treaty was ratified, to require the absolute sub¬ 
jection of the vast populations of those islands. He de¬ 
creed that they should not be independent, that they 
should not cherish the hope at any time of being free, but 
that they must accept our supremacy, and trust to us to 
give them such rights and such degree of local self-gov¬ 
ernment as we might judge proper. They could never 
hope to be citizens of the United States; they could not 
even expect to be free citizens of their own country. 
Their laws, their institutions, and their government must 
be made by us, and primarily to promote our interests. 


47 


la Porto Rico the inhabitants quietly submitted to this 
decree. They had believed the declarations of the gen¬ 
eral commanding our armies that the constitution of the 
United States would follow its flag, and that notwithstand¬ 
ing the terms of the treaty, they would be accorded the 
rights of American citizenship. But in the Philippines 
where the people, with the cordial approval of our repre¬ 
sentatives, naval, military, and civil, had practically 
achieved their independence, had destroyed or taken pris¬ 
oners the Spanish armies, had established a government 
and held undisputed possession of Luzon, with the excep¬ 
tion of the city of Manila, the announcement of the pur¬ 
pose of the President fell with astounding force. An 
alleged trespass across the American lines led to an 
attack by our armed forces upon the allies whom we had 
summoned and encouraged, and bv whose sacrifices and 
services we had been aided; and although the patriot 
leader of the Filipinos apologized for the error of 
his subordinates and begged for a cessation of hos¬ 
tilities, our general replied that the war having begun 
must be prosecuted to the end, and his action was 
approved by the President. Since then, by the express 
direction of the President, the war has been conducted 
with remorseless and relentless fury. Tens of thousands 
have been killed, the young men, the valiant, the best and 
bravest of the Filipinos, their towns have been burned, 
their women and children have been driven without food 
or shelter into the morasses or the mountains, the jails have 
been filled to overflowing with political prisoners, their 
leaders, among them Mabini, a statesman worthy of any 
age or country, crippled through his oppositiou to Spanish 
cruelty, have been exiled, and now, all those methods 
failing to crush out the spirit of liberty for which these 
men are dying, the horrors of the reconcentrado system 
of Weyler, and tortures too dreadful to detail, have been 
employed by American soldiers carrying the flag of a free 
countiy. For whose benefit is all this wanton wicked 
waste of life and property ? Not for the Filipinos. The 
universal testimony is that, throughout the islands, except 
where the people are under the immediate terror of our 
guns, there is devotion to their cause of independence and 
a determination not to submit to our control. For the 
benefit of the foreign residents and interests in Manila? 
There is no reason to believe that these were ever seriously 
imperilled. For the benefit of Americans ? What Ameri¬ 
cans, except camp followers and speculators, will ever 


48 


venture into these tropical regions? But even if the 
islands possessed all the riches of mine and forest and agri¬ 
culture which the most imaginative description has given 
us, and honest American emigrants would rush in to occupy 
them, what right have we to secure them by force? We 
are told that our government, after it has destroyed all 
opposition, will establish schools and seek to develop the 
capacity and intelligence of such of the inhabitants as it 
has not slaughtered. But does any one seriously suppose 
that seven millions of Asiatics can be taught the English 
language and English customs and can be made over into 
Anglo-Saxons? There is no precedent in history for such 
a belief; sooner or later we shall be compelled to admit 
that though our shot and shells, our prisons, and our tor¬ 
tures, can take lives and destroy houses and stores 
and the little savings of an humble, afflicted, aud long- 
suffering people, it cannot kill the love of liberty or the 
hope of independence. 

The advocates and supporters of the President’s policy 
who have endeavored, with difficulty and doubts they must 
confess, to justify the unhappy conditions in the Philip¬ 
pines have, however, until lately consoled themselves by 
believing that the President would at least keep his promise 
to the Cubans. But the man who said that it was our plain 
duty to give free trade to the Porto Ricans and straight¬ 
way imposed a tariff upou them without their consent, and 
who declared that forcible conquest was criminal aggres¬ 
sion, and then entered upon a war of subjugation against 
the Philippines, might be depended upon in the fulness of 
time to break the solemn word by which the nation pledged 
independence to Cuba. Many people were credulous 
enough to believe that that word would be kept. But there 
have been indications almost from the beginning that the 
President and his most confidential advisers had no inten¬ 
tion of permitting Cuba to go beyond our grasp, and that, 
by one course or another, events were to be so controlled 
that the Cubans should be compelled either to take refuge 
in annexation, or to make open opposition to our arms 
which would justify their forcible subjugation. The terms 
which the President has induced Congress to impose as 
the condition of our recognizing their independence are 
absolutely incompatible with their independence, and if 
acceded to will make them a vassal nation, deprived of 
the most important elements of sovereignty. This latest 
outrage on human rights is more, even, than some of the 
President’s own supporters can tolerate, and it may be 


49 


that it will awaken men who up to the present have ac¬ 
quiesced in this rapid departure from our recognized prin¬ 
ciples of government. 

It is well, therefore, for us herein Faneuil Hall to enter 
our solemn protest against this new doctrine of forcible 
conquest, and this denial of the rights of man. 

Let us renew our vows to the cause of liberty and 
peace. Let us say again with Webster : “ There is noth¬ 
ing that satisfies the human mind in an enlightened age 
unless man is governed by his own country and the insti¬ 
tutions of his own government.” Let us go back to the 
Declaration of Independence made by great men, not for 
one race and time, but for all races and for all ages, and re¬ 
member what Lincoln said of them : “ Wise statesmen as 
they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed 
tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident 
truths, that when in the distant future some men, some 
faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that 
none but rich men, or none but white men, or none but 
Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled* to liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again 
to the Declaration of Independence, and take courage to 
renew the battle which their fathers began ... so 
that no man should thereafter dare to limit and circum¬ 
scribe the principles on which the temple of liberty was 
being built.” 


50 


THE REV. A. A. BERLE, D.D. 

It is a triple cry of liberty which calls us together this 
evening, and without exaggeration there has probably been 
no more serious cause before the American people for 
judgment than that which is embodied in the rallying cry, 
Free America, Free Cuba, and Free Philippines. If at 
first glance this seems to be an alliterative trick for 
rhetorical effect, a more careful examination of the facts 
will soon convince us that, for once at least, the rhetoric 
of the rallying cry is the expression of a solemn and un¬ 
mistakable alliance of thought and result, from which the 
mind cannot escape. For, ultimately, the preservation of 
a free America is bound up in the effort to keep and 
establish a free Cuba, and this in turn, if it is to be other 
than a mere jumbling of meaningless terms, must finally 
emerge in a free group of Philippine islands. 

It is of the nature of the vocabulary of liberty, a vocabu¬ 
lary which we are in danger of losing, because the facts are 
becoming so dissonant with the natural meaniugs of the 
terms employed that its terms must mean the same things 
wherever they are used. It does not admit of artificial dis¬ 
tinctions among the members of the human family. It has 
no distinctions of race or condition to sustain, nor any of 
civilization or religion to uphold. The vocabulary of hu¬ 
man freedom, especially in the domain of political liberty, 
is the one vocabulary which means the same thing wherever 
applied. This is the great distinction which democracy 
has produced in the government of man. Imperialism in 
all its forms has, if I ma}’ so term it, that sliding scale of 
interpretation which can mean democracy in England, 
autocrac } 7 in India, aristocracy in Ireland, and plutocracy 
in South Africa. And these again have the grim and 
mobile power to change themselves easily and readily into 
eviction, rapine, despotism, and slaughter. If these are 
the possibilities of the most .benign form of imperialism, 
and we have seen and are seeing them in operation at the 
present moment, we have before us the great and endur¬ 
ing contrast between democracy as represented by the 
American republic and the best imperialism that we can 
conceive to be possible. But the vocabulary of freedom 
admits of no such changes of interpretation. Genuine free¬ 
dom means genuine freedom whether in Boston, Havana, 


51 


or Manila, and the lover of real freedom will never consent 
to a compromise nor even an interpretation of liberty which 
makes such a distinction in the slightest degree possible. 

It has been since onr Spanish war that we have begun 
as a people to think about the possibility of such a varia¬ 
ble meaning of the terms of national freedom. A war 
begun, as 1 believe, under a tutelage whose condemnation 
posterity alone can adequately describe, “ begotten in 
prejudice and nurtured in error,” utilizing the generous 
sympathies of this great American people for personal and 
ignoble ends, started us in the downward course of im¬ 
perialistic development, first of all by policy of equivoca¬ 
tion and confusion in the meaning of the most sacred 
words of our national vocabulary. Liberation, instead of 
ringing true to the historic traditions of Washington and 
the mighty company of the forefathers who established 
the land and gave it institutions, and maintained by 
Lincoln, who reaffirmed with the blood of a million soldiers 
the correctness of the definitions of liberty which the 
fathers had written with the blood and toil of the Revolu¬ 
tionary campaigns, began to take on the aspect of equivo¬ 
cation and hesitation. The Declaration of Independence 
began to stick in the throat of those who represented the 
people of the United States in their national government. 

The belief in the inherent right of men to be free began 
to assume the sinister aspect of menace to men whose 
hope of gain lay in the subjection of great tracts of land 
and great masses of human labor, for which they rendered 
no suitable equivalent themselves. The great maxims of 
liberty and the love of freedom began to disappear from 
the public documents of the nation, and in their place 
began a systematic presentation of the most cowardly 
flight from the elementary demands of morality and 
humanity that our land has ever seen. We began to hear 
of the amazing and most bewildering interference of 
Providence in the affairs of the Republic. We began to 
hear much of duty beyond the seas, while duty, I suppose, 
being beyond the seas, utterly disappeared at home. We 
began to hear that a mysterious and unbridled force called 
destiny was shoving us on in a career of rapine, blood¬ 
shed, and dishonor, and presented to the world the 
astounding spectacle of a free people beginning a war of 
liberation by calling on God to witness the rectitude of 
their intentions and ending it with persistent and shame¬ 
less bloodshed in the carrying out of a Divine decree! 

Never, in the history of a free people, in my judgment, 


52 


was the nomenclature of religion so basely misused, nor 
the religious attitude in times of turbulence and anxiety 
so fearfully and grossly caricatured. If liberty has suf¬ 
fered in this imperialistic development religion has 
suffered even more; if the doctrines of human rights have 
become obscured the ideas of the providence and over¬ 
ruling wisdom of God have for a generation, in many 
minds, become hopelessly eclipsed. 

Nor has the loss of the appropriate and efficient use of 
the vocabulary of freedom been without its legitimate 
result. The forgetfulness of the people of the real mean¬ 
ing of these terms has led to their submission in the loss 
of the things which follow naturally in their train. Thus 
national documents affecting, not our course toward a 
foreign people, but our purposes toward ourselves, have 
been and are being systematically withheld from the 
public view, and thus escaping public criticism and judg¬ 
ment. There has never been a time of peace in the 
history of this republic, so far as I am aware, when so 
many documents vital to the formation of a mature and 
enlightened public opinion have been so steadily kept 
from the public as since the imperialistic course of our 
national government was entered upon. We have been 
assured that there is no war, or but very little war, in the 
Philippines, but nevertheless because of that little, our 
national government has withheld from us papers which a 
free people not only has the right to have submitted to its 
judgment, but which an elective executive cannot in honor 
keep from the people’s sight. It is thus that despotism in 
the distant islands of the sea has produced its rapid and 
sure reaction in despotism and the practice of militarism 
at home. It is thus that free Philippines are inseparably 
linked with free America and free Cuba. It is thus that 
these three particular phases of the liberty question are 
not really three, but one. And far more serious now, 
even than the cessation of the slaughter in the Philippine 
islands, is the creation of a public opinion which sees the 
danger of our institutions at home. Never in my judg¬ 
ment was the vocabulary of the Revolutionary patriots 
more appropriate in the lips of truth-loving Americans 
than now. Never was there such an appeal for the spirit 
of the men who laid the foundations of the American re¬ 
public. A greater humanity than theirs w r aits upon the 
issues now deciding. A greater morality, because more 
comprehensive than theirs, in sweep and ethical possibility, 
calls for the swift and persistent resistance of American 


53 


patriots to the imperialistic movement. If Hancock and 
Otis and Adams were right we are, if possible, more 
right. Because while the liberty tree of the forefathers 
was a slender sapling, affording only precarious protection 
from the raging storms of world rapine and ravage, we 
are set to protect a mighty oak which has sheltered 
millions already and should shelter millions more. 

Out of the attitude of equivocation came the mighty 
lust for possession and conquest. Out of the passionate 
greed for power and possession came a new fertility in ethi¬ 
cal jugglery. Peace and pacification, for example, have be¬ 
come among the bloodiest words in our recent history. It 
is the business of pacification that has made thirty thousand 
graves in the Philippine Islands. It is pacification that has 
burned homes and wiped whole villages from the face of the 
earth. It is pacification that is now going on, in the battle 
between honor and uprightness and private interest in the 
struggle for a free Cuba. And as it is in the nature of 
liberty to maintain its essential integrity wherever the con¬ 
ception is born, so it is in the nature of war and slaughter 
to grow wherever the} T have once been begun. We have 
sent our young soldiers to those distant islands and have in¬ 
doctrinated them into a series of lessons in rapine, ravage, 
and debauchery which has not been equalled in American 
history. We have led the army of the United States into 
campaigns from which the very men behind the guns have 
shrunk until, deluged in blood and corrupted by the very 
horrors in which they were engaged, they have become lost 
to the finer sense of Americanism which we supposed im- 
pregnably planted in their breasts. “We never knew 
these traits were in our boy,” pathetically writes a father 
on reading the bloody letter which his debauched son, lust¬ 
ing for blood and delighting in slaughter, writes to him at 
home. Nor can we wonder, when Duty has changed his 
national banner into a blood-red rag and the Christian 
gospel has become Mohamrnedanized into glory and 
slaughter of the infidel as the surest method of winning 
the approval of Providence ! This is the sorest infliction 
of all, that the very core of our humanity is thus cor¬ 
rupted and a silent or confused clergy join with a mad¬ 
dened and blood-spattered army in glorifying the achieve¬ 
ments of the field, where blood and fire and rapine are the 
outstanding features of the horrifying spectacle. We 
must rescue America from these things and we must free 
the Philippines and free Cuba because the freedom of 
America ultimately allied inseparably to its moral and 


54 


religious sense holds not only the political but the religious 
future of so large a part of the world in its hands. Duty 
must be made to mean what it meant before this orgy of 
faith-breaking and promise-breaking began. Destiny 
must mean honorable effort to bring living and active duty 
into the common relations of men and nations. And 
Providence must be made again to signify not a monstrous 
deity hurrying men into bloodshed and slaughter, but a 
restraining God whom even a pre-Christian prophet pre¬ 
sented as moderating and restraining the passions and 
desires of the human race that “ the bruised reed will he 
not break and the smoking flax will he not quench.” 
That even the rush-lights of human hopes and freedom are 
as dear to Him as the mightiest beacons from which life 
and liberty have blazed out upon a darkened w'orld. 

This confusion of the public mind and this policy of 
equivocation and treachery has been the golden oppor¬ 
tunity for plutocracy and political corruption to perfect 
and exploit its schemes for plunder and personal gain. 
Leading the American public to the top of the mountain, 
imperialism has shown them the kingdoms of the world 
and has said to them, all these will I give thee if thou wilt 
but fall down and worship me. It was a liar who uttered 
the temptation originally; it is the versatile brood of the 
Father of Lies that keeps on repeating it. The policy of 
blood yields only blood. And if a blood-stained David 
was not permitted to build a temple to Jehovah we may 
be sure that no blood-bedraggled McKinley will give us a 
New and Greater America. The secure foundations of 
a sound national life are bedded in justice and justice 
alone. And the swift telegraph and cable, however long 
censored and withheld, will bring to us the truth, and the 
truth only can make us free. There has never in my 
judgment been a moment in the whole fearful Philippine 
war that a single American interest worthy the name 
would have suffered one jot if the hostilities had been 
instantly brought to a close, and a congress of Filipinos 
called, as we have called a congress of the Cubans. And 
there will be no peace till such a step is taken and the 
liberated telegraph makes it possible for the Filipino people 
and the American people to come face to face. In that 
interchange of a public opinion, which is not based upon 
falsehood and misrepresentation nor maintained by greed 
and lust of money, with a public opinion which desires 
only freedom sufficient to work out its own salvation, there 
will come the right solution of our grave and trying calam- 


55 


ities. It is toward this end that we must steadily strive. 
It is for this result that we must steadily labor. We shall 
not be discouraged and we shall ultimately triumph. 
Truth has often been on the scaffold before while trium¬ 
phant Error was on the throne. But the years of God are 
God’s and Truth’s. America will remain free. And be¬ 
cause America is free, Cuba and the Philippines shall be 
free also. 

Since the above was written has come the news of the 
capture and taking of the allegiance oath by Aguinaldo. 
The precise terms and agreement under which this oath 
was taken and what the plans and purpose of the Admin¬ 
istration with respect to the same are, no man can yet tell, 
probably not even the Administration itself. The habit of 
equivocation and vacillation is so strongly fixed among 
our imperialistic rulers that plain duty one day may be¬ 
come plain villainy the next. It is rather a happy sign 
that they find the way of the imperialistic trangressor 
rather hard. But the fact of Aguinaldo’s capture and 
oath in no degree invalidate nor modify what I have 
written above. The imperialistic course is just as false, 
just as untrue to the ideals of the American nation- 
builders, and just as alien to any true and enduring con¬ 
ception of liberty, whether Aguinaldo surrenders, is 
captured, swears allegiance, or is hanged. Liberty, as I 
may again remark, is not a matter that is affected by 
accidents of condition or acts of persons. Benedict 
Arnold’s treason did not change a hair’s breadth the course* 
of our forefathers. The Mexican war, remembered as a 
blot on the good name of our country, has not changed in 
its character because Texas and the added territory have 
prospered under American rule. If Cuba is annexed or 
otherwise stolen from its rightful owners, the facts which 
are true concerning this nation’s solemn pledge will not 
be altered one jot. The very gospel of Christ itself has 
habitually to undergo just such trials ; and probably more 
shameless things have been done in the name of religion, 
especially of the Christian religion, than we can, in our 
mild-mannered age, imagine. But the facts of Christ’s 
gospel have never been invalidated thereby; only a 
stronger contrast has been made between that gospel and 
those who misrepresent it. My firm and unalterable 
conviction about the whole business is that the nation will 
rue it and repudiate it; that our sons and grandsons will 
feel about Cuba and the Philippines as we feel about the 
Indians and the Mexican war; that as we blush for our 


56 


century of dishonor in connection with the red man, so 
they will weep for the thousands of slain Filipinos, and 
will help to erect statues to the fallen martyrs of liberty 
in those far-away islands. I see a distant generation 
pausing before a bronze figure of the gifted Mabini, and 
telling the story of how he made the president of Cornell 
University blush and stammer when he was brought face 
to face with the Declaration of Independence contrasted 
with the burning homes and wanton slaughter of helpless 
Filipinos; I see men in whose veins shall flow the blood 
of the heroes of South Africa, linking in glorious union 
the names of the fallen sons with those of our hapless 
victims of the lust of imperialism in the Philippine Islands. 
They will be free then, and there will be peace and plenty 
in the land. And the peoples of the world will wonder 
that a great people like ours could think so majestic an 
ideal into the world and abuse it so mercilessly. Brutal- 
ism and blood will have vanished before a larger practice 
of humanity, and brotherhood and wars will be no more. 
But till that day dawns the friends of liberty will toil and 
struggle on, and the loss of no man, the surrender of 
many, and the abandonment of liberty by many more, 
will not swerve them from the true end of liberty: a 
Parliament of Man, a Federation of the World. 


LETTERS. 


The following letters were received by the Secretary : 

Havana, March 10, 1901. 

We are in receipt of telegrams from all over the Island, 
sent by political organizations, municipalities, and indi¬ 
viduals, all expressing the same sentiments, which may be 
summed up as follows : 

The people of Cuba, while they have lost all confidence 
in the administration’s declaration concerning Cuba’s lib¬ 
erty, have never lost faith in the generosity and integrity 
of the American nation. / We have known that political 
schemers were attempting to bring about such legislative 
measures as would enable them to appropriate whatever 
they most desired ; that the chicanery indulged in was not 
known to the majority we are fully aware, as we are con¬ 
fident that had Washington announced its intention to 
repudiate the Teller resolution the people of the United 
States would long since have protested so vigorously and 
forcibly that Congress would never have dared contem¬ 
plate such a measure as the Platt amendment. 

Our position from the first has been that of a people 
who recognized its own inability to resent what a more pow¬ 
erful nation would never have tolerated. We Cubans 
never asked the United States for anything more than 
recognition of our belligerent rights, which recognition 
was refused us in the most positive manner. We never 
asked for intervention, and we know perfectly well that it 
would never have been brought about had the “Maine” 
not been destroyed in Havana Harbor, or had Spain 
agreed to pay an indemnity or even manifested a spirit of 
apology. 

When the war terminated we accepted establishment 
of a military government and urged our soldiers to deliver 
their arms to the American authorities, placing ourselves 
completely in the hands and at the mercy of the nation 
which had driven Spain from our territory, after calling 
men and angels to witness that its action was prompted 

57 



58 


by purely unselfish and humane motives, and that the 
United States intended to exercise no u jurisdiction , sov¬ 
ereignty, or control over Cuba.” (See Teller resolution, 
April i9, 1898.) 

The sentiment of Cubans toward Americans during 
the early part of 1899 can best be attested by those 
Americans who were here at the time; who saw American 
flags at every turn ; who saw Cubans take the part of 
Americans in each of the frequent riots between the latter 
and the Spanish soldiery ; who saw American soldiers 
received with open arms wherever they went; who saw the 
leading Cubah families — too unfamiliar with your national 
characteristics to discriminate between classes — offer the 
hospitality of their homes to every one announcing him¬ 
self as American; who saw the cordiality and good-fel¬ 
lowship manifested at the dinners, balls, and receptions 
which were participated in almost daily by all residents 
of and visitors to Havana. 

_ S We feel to-day precisely as we did then toward 

Americans. Our sentiment toward American politicians 
and the reliance to be placed in administration promises 
has been completely altered by the administration’s own 
policy. Over two years of sickening delay, wanton dis- 
v regard of our wishes and interests, culminating with the 
Congressional declaration that the Teller resolution was 
never meant to be kept, have caused us to feel rather 
disheartened. 

We recognize our own powerlessness to resent ex¬ 
cept by silent and spoken protest. You are in power; 
your forces occupy our territory; your representatives 
have for over two years done as they pleased with our 
finances ; your soldiers guard the voluntarily surrendered 
arms with which we fought against Spain for three years 
before you came to our assistance, and the generosity of 
the American people who assisted us secretly in our war 
with Spain could not be called upon for similar aid against 
Federal forces. 

After all administration promises we are told that 
I we must yield to the United States all jurisdiction , sov- 
v ereignty , and control over affairs, and, in addition, we 
must give up territory to the disinterested United States. 

At the end of your own Revolutionary War France 
requested of you certain concessions as demonstrations of 
3 ’our gratitude. You refused to comply. Yet France 
did not demand the privilege of maintaining a permanent 
naval station in New York or any other harbor. 


59 


The foregoing is a concrete statement of what is be¬ 
ing said and written every day. That ttfe people of the 
United States have been deliberately misled is apparent 
to every one on the ground. The sentiment at large is 
one of bitter, scornful indignation. In this the Spaniards 
share fully, and are just as outspoken as the Cubans. I 
will give you two examples. The “ Diario de la Marina,” 
ultra Spanish organ of the ultra conservative Spaniards, 
on receipt of the Platt amendment declared : 

“ The measure is an outrage. When asked for our 
purse at the point of a pistol we must surrender it, be- J 
cause by force one may be lynched, but it is expecting 
too much to ask us to say we wish our purses taken from 
us.” 

The “ Union Espanola,” another radical Spanish organ, 
editorially states: 

“ We, who yesterday condemned the Cuban who raised 
his voice in rebellion against the mother country, to-day ^ 
experience nothing but sorrow and sympathy for our own 
brother people. Before everything we are Latin, and we 
shall resist with all our power any attempt to eradicate 
from Cuba the stamp of our nationality.” 

The two utterances are most significant. They denote j 
the alteration which has come about in the minds of the V 
people who were at first our best friends. The two 
papers mentioned were ardent upholders of an annexa¬ 
tion policy. They urged Cubans to consider the advisa¬ 
bility of coming under the protection of the United States 
as an integral part thereof. 

Facts about Cuba have been systematically suppressed 
or distorted, and I speak in the name of my paper and of 
the Cuban people in thanking you for placing before the 
public the truth as to local conditions and ideas, and the 
actual situation. Believe me, 

• Very sincerely yours, 

Edwin Warren Guyol, 

Editor “ La Lucha.” 


New Haven, March 19, 1901. 

I regret very much that my engagements here are such 
that I cannot go to Boston on the 30th. My own point 
of view in regard to expansion and imperialism is that 
they are against the interests of the people of the United 
States. I was very earnestly opposed to the war with 
Spain, primarily because there was no true cause of war; 



60 


the United States had no grievance and no interest; sec¬ 
ondarily, because my judgment was that the adventure was 
sure to entangle us in obligations and difficulties. The 
resolutions and declarations about, “criminal aggression” 
and no conquest of Cuba seemed to me idle and foolish, 
because we were sure to take Cuba, and such declarations 
could serve no purpose except to be quoted against us and 
make us ridiculous as well as criminal in the end. Con¬ 
gress closed its recent session by uttering an ultimatum to 
the Cubans. If this is not “criminal aggression” what 
is? If we had conquered Cuba as an enemy in arms how 
else could we have acted to her ? 

I do not believe in the statesmanship which proceeds b\ T 
issuing ultimatums to the other party. This is a world in 
which it is never safe for the biggest and strongest to 
swagger about with too much indifference to the rights 
and feelings of others. The lines of action on which we 
are advancing are those on which problems are sure to 
multiply against us. Our enemies and those who fear us 
may well rejoice to see us getting our hands so full of 
trouble of our own making that w’e shall be unable to 
interfere with them. People seem to think that a little 
war once in a while with a contemptible enemy is great 
fun. I believe that such a w’ar is a great danger to our¬ 
selves. I do not mean to express dissent from others who 
feel more strongly the wrongs suffered by the Cubans and 
Filipinos from our action, but m 3 ’ own point of view is 
that of the interest of our own people. I regret to see 
what we are losing or throwing away of our own institu¬ 
tions and traditions, and I cannot watch the change in the 
temper and character of our own people without apprehen¬ 
sions about our national prosperity and stabilit} 7- . 

Yours very truly, 

W . G. Sumner. 


Boston, Mass., March 30, 1901. 

I find it impossible to attend the meeting at Faneuil 
Hall to-night, and very much regret it. I hope the posi¬ 
tion will be made clear that the capture of Aguinaldo, or 
indeed the collapse of the war, cannot change our pur¬ 
pose nor our objection to the policy of the administration. 
The United States should not assume the government of 
the Philippine islands with or without force, with or 
without the consent of the people. Let each people work 



61 


out its salvation in its own way. America for the Ameri¬ 
cans, the Philippines for the Filipinos, and Cuba for the 
Cubans. 

Sincerely yours, 

Patrick A. Collins. 


Winter Park, Florida, March 19, 1901. 

It would give me great pleasure to attend the meeting 
which is to be held in Faneuil Hall on the evening of the 30th 
instant, but it now seems probable that I shall not return 
to Massachusetts until about the first of May. I am glad 
the meeting is to be held, and I hope the speakers will 
portray in its true colors the policy of the present admin¬ 
istration toward the Filipino and Cuban people. The 
brutal and bloody warfare which is being carried on in 
the Philippines against a brave and liberty-loving people 
is well supplemented by the recent perfidious betrayal of 
the Cubans, to whom the most sacred pledges of untram¬ 
melled self-government had been given by the American 
Congress. Would to God that there might be a great 
uprising of the honest and patriotic citizenship of our 
country to rescue the Republic from the hands of its worst 
enemies, the men who utter pious platitudes while they 
rob and murder the poor and defenceless, who are sacri¬ 
ficing the young manhood of the country on the altar of 
aggression and greed, who are making the country’s flag 
the emblem of treachery, injustice, and despotism. 

Respectfully yours, 

Albion A. Perry. 


Marion, Mass., March 29, 1901. 

I regret that I cannot be present on Saturday night to 
hear the protest which is to be made against our breaking 
faith with Cuba, and against our continuing the war in 
the Philippines. 

The promise made to Cuba and to the world that the / 
United States would not attempt to control that island, v 
but would instead give her her independence, was made 
by the chosen representatives of the people. 

As the representatives of the people their promise is 
binding upon the people, and if it is now broken it will 
not only be our national honor which will suffer, but the 
private honor of every man in this country. 




62 




When 1 was in Cuba during the Cuban-Spanish war I 
witnessed the sacrifices which the Cubans were willing to 
make for the sake of their future independence. I saw 
their homes burned, their wives and children herded in 
such numbers in the towns that they lay in the open 
streets and plazas dying of fever and starvation by the 
thousand, and I saw the men of Cuba shot against stone 
walls because they had dared to fight for their freedom. 

When I remember these scenes and that these sacrifices 
were made by the Cubans to obtain the rights of self-gov¬ 
ernment, I must be one of those who protest that the 
United States shall not take that right from them. If 
she does, then, not only the hundred thousand Cubans 
who gave their lives for liberty, but the thousands of our 
own young men who died of fever at Montauk Point and 
at Camp Alger, and who were killed in battle at San Juan, 
have given their lives in vain. 

I am, Sir, sincerely yours, 

Richard Harding Davis. 


Washington, March 15, 1901. 

I have just received your favor of the 13th, forwarded 
from Winchester. I do not expect to return home until 
about May 1, and so will not be able to attend the meet¬ 
ing which is to be held concerning Cuba. I have been 
hoping that I might be able to go to Cuba this spring, but 
I fear I shall be unable to do so. What a great loss the 
country has suffered in the death of President Harrison! 
He really delivered the great message of his life within 
the last four months. 

Sincerely yours, 

S. W. McCall. 


Boston, March 29, 1901. 

I have an engagement Saturday night which will prevent 
my being present at the meeting at Faneuil Hall, in which 
I feel a very great deal of interest. I wish there were some 
way by which an expression from our people could be 
secured on this imperial policy. I feel, like many thousand 
others similarly situated, that no opportunity has been yet 
presented. . . . 

I wish our organization could circulate a paper among 
the more important men of our city, and thus secure an 


( 




63 


expression of opinion on this great issue, for as far as I 
have been able to observe, at least nine out of ten of the 
thinking men are opposed to our present policy. 

Very truly yours, 

Edwin Ginn. 


Chicago, March 28, 1901. 

I ought to have advised you sooner that it will be im¬ 
possible for me to be present at the meeting to be held at 
Faneuil Hall on the 30th inst. Please to send me the 
fullest possible report of the meeting. I shall be glad to 
see Mr. Boutwell’s review. The reported capture of 
Aguinaldo will add a dramatic interest to the occasion. 
The contrast that may be drawn between the time when 
Aguinaldo was taken back to the islands by direction of 
Admiral Dewey on an American war vessel, and his 
capture by the dastardly treachery of natives bribed to 
that end by American gold, is striking and discreditable 
to the United States. 

Yours very truly, 

Edwin Burritt Smith, 


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